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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27257725">somewhere only we know</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiniInfinity/pseuds/MiniInfinity'>MiniInfinity</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>SEVENTEEN (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - 2000s, Alternate Universe - Bakery, Alternate Universe - College/University, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Summer Romance, soonyoung adopts the neighborhood kids in the summertime</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 09:28:56</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>22,347</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27257725</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiniInfinity/pseuds/MiniInfinity</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>And Soonyoung writes on his letter to Seokmin, <em>You made my summer, and summer won't ever be the same again.</em></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kwon Soonyoung | Hoshi/Lee Seokmin | DK</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Seoksoon Fireball Fest 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>*reads that i had this idea since july 2019* oh boy, the surprise i had when seokmin started posting his covers as he played the guitar :'D</p><p>this fic is set in 2007. it gives me an excuse to use landline phones and letters and the unadulterated joy of playing outside</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>On his first day of summer vacation, clouds surrender to the skies. Breezes greet the buds of his cheeks as neighborhood kids rush down from the convenience store with ice cream bars oozing onto the fingers and down their arms, perhaps a drop parading off short fingertips and onto Soonyoung’s own arm.</p><p>He hits the usual corner before his apartment building, at the junction of catching familiar lobby doors that welcomed him all twenty-one years of his life and the chance of losing himself all at once in this city. His feet map the crevices of sidewalks and the crackles of street vendors’ grills, how the abyss of the city and nature meet at the single flowering yellow before the TV repair shop. His ears pick up the neighborhood grandmother humming an abandoned love song from just two stores behind him. He knows how much longer he can keep his hand out to touch the brick walls of the cafe before brick dissipates into the air, and he needs to drop his hand <em>right now </em>so that his fingertips won’t ruin the clarity of glass windows and display shelves of the mom-and-pop bakery.</p><p>But it’s the surrender to the grandmother’s sacred humming into a single strum of a guitar that stops his steps from breaching any closer to home. It’s a sound foreign in this part of town when the radio shops and television repairs reside the next block over. His way home halts with the rush of children around him once more. Sunlight basks like headlights at his eyes when he cranes his head back and tries to pinpoint where that second strum comes from.</p><p>The kids, once slapping their steps on summer concrete and now bordering into dangers of the road, stutter their shoes not even in front of the next business sign over when a voice of silk accompanies the guitar.</p><p><em>I see trees of green</em> shuts down the pollution of shipment trucks backing into the driveway, the gusts of wind from exhausting air conditioners, gasoline fumes poisoning his lungs.</p><p>His neck snaps somewhere above the sidewalk benches, where the kids sit and search for that same voice, too, at its <em>Red roses, too.</em></p><p>His eyes graze through summer heat bathing everyone to look up past store signs, flickering fluorescent <em>Open</em> behind a few windows, in hopes of landing on the source of <em>I see them bloom for me and you.</em></p><p>A step back nearly trips him into the street. He considers peeking above parched rain gutters and protective tarpaulin, sale prices for the season and the tops of kids’ heads, sweat plastering their fringes and wispy baby hairs there. He brings a hand up over his eyes as he searches the roofs of buildings because the voice should be somewhere close if he and the kids can hear it despite the commotion of summer’s beginnings.</p><p>His eyes skitter building to building, sidewalk bench to crosswalks, shop names and shop hours, until <em>And I think to myself</em> slaps him with someone perched on the rooftop of the bakery swaying to the rhythm of the song, not even an arm’s reach away in front of the second-story window. Basketball shorts wave at him with the breeze and the wind carries his curiosity into <em>What a wonderful world.</em></p><p>It might be the sun’s glare at his eyes, but the curve of the guitar fades not a beat after that line. The boy’s chest huffs out the heat sticking from his lungs and throat before picking up the hanging chords once more.</p><p><em>I see skies of blue</em> hitches into the air as he traces the boy’s jaws working out the words, <em>and clouds of white</em>.</p><p><em>The bright, blessed day, </em>Soonyoung gasps at the boy’s voice dragging this one line before dropping his tone all at once, <em>the dark sacred night</em>.</p><p>His heart punches out his chest when someone seems to do the same, and he looks down to a pair of pigtails and chubby arms reaching up and barely reaching his chest, threatening to slather melted ice cream goo all over him.</p><p>“I wanna see, too,” Taerin pouts, fingers latching onto the bottom hem of his shirt. He takes her two stick hands into his and crouches down, asks if she wants to sit on his shoulders.</p><p>The single question offered to Taerin only busts out pleas from the other, much older kids to get their turn on his shoulders and to revel their sights on the source of the voice. But the chaos coming from the kids must have started something in the boy on the rooftop because when he looks up again to see which direction the building that this boy has been serenading off of, dusts of dirt and leaves sprinkle down to the edge of the rooftop and on the ground before them. The boy scrambles up and away from the rooftop, and Soonyoung winces at the sound of the guitar smacking the side of the window as he scurries back in.</p><p>Soonyoung sighs, speculates if the boy sang out in the open with the sole purpose of no one else listening in. A whimper of disappointment from her throat, Taerin loosens her arms from around his neck and asks if she can stand up again. He brushes the sticky strands across her forehead and ignores the ones sticking onto his work shirt. “Sorry, Taerin. I think he went back inside.”</p><p>Another girl in pigtails starts the flood of “Aww” and “I wanted to see what he looks like.” He assures the rest of the little ones with a hopeful “He’ll come and sing again tomorrow, maybe,” and hopes that this sentiment is enough to guide them back to their homes, to the same apartment complex.</p><p>Back in his home, he turns to his father slicing the watermelon in half. He reaches across the kitchen counter for the other half, leans to the side to grab another knife.</p><p>“Hey, Dad,” Soonyoung begins as he makes his first cut. His father glances at him past the wire rim of his glasses, and he takes it as the usual sign to continue on. “This guy was singing on the rooftop of the bakery, but he ran away when the kids wanted to see him.”</p><p>“Maybe he has stage fright,” his father supposes, pursing his lips below the slight knit of his brows. “Or rooftop fright.”</p><p>“But he’s good, though” sinks doubtful and quiet between them. He places the knife down to prop his chin on his palm, leans side to side again as he forces the ghosting memory of the voice back to him. He wonders why the boy would sing out in the open but run away at the sign of an eavesdrop. The question leaves his lips, though, differs, “Why would he hide when he’s obviously good at singing?”</p><p>His dad offers without a beat to spare, “Some people just don’t know how good they are.”</p><p>____</p><p>On his second day of summer, clouds surrender to the skies. The moment Soonyoung opens his eyes, he tells himself he should find the boy singing on the rooftop again. But perhaps the boy shied off into summer shades, away from the rooftop and nowhere close to where another being can chime into. He wonders if he scared the boy from singing at the rooftop again, from singing all over.</p><p>He turns over in the sheets, kicks them off his feet completely when he glances at the clock and counts down for the same hours of yesterday, for the same hour he first caught the boy. There’s still some time to go and with his manager needing him more at the start of next week, vacation is generous to him with an extra day of rest.</p><p>He washes up and after a quick breakfast, he bids his mother goodbye for now and that he will come back before lunch, his father an “I’m going to see if the boy is there again.”</p><p>Summer breezes pick up wafts of fresh bread, drips of icing, melts of chocolate chips. He catches the same group of kids from yesterday packing themselves into the bench in front of the bakery. When he waves at them, none of them wave back at him, despite their cursory meetings of their eyes, and he forgives them as “This is the biggest number of us on this bench!” echoes down the street.</p><p>Taerin slips out of the bench to run up to him, queueing every other kid on the bench to barrel over around him because “The boy is in there” and “Can you come inside with us?”</p><p>Soonyoung should keep his promise, should follow what he told his father this morning before he left. So he digs up a few bills from his wallet, asks what the kids want to eat, and he’s more surprised at their desires to meet the boy inside than to taste the baked goods usually coaxing their taste buds into sugary oblivion.</p><p>He opens the door for all of them, tells them to sit at a far corner where they bother people from the farthest distance possible within the four walls. With all the kids inside, he steers over to the back corner of the shop, closest to the restrooms, and starts pushing as many seats they need closer to the table. He smiles at the oldest kid pulling Taerin onto his lap when they run out of empty seats for the rest of the kids, thanks Hyunmin for offering her a seat with a ruffle of his hair. Between the bustle of lunch rush, the smile escapes his face when his ears pick out Taerin’s muttering.</p><p>He crouches down to her height and holds her face gently in his hands, tells her that she shouldn’t say her address aloud. But she smiles at him, the buds of her cheeks dusting pink and sweeter than all the desserts around, and says, “Grandma is teaching me because I might get lost.”</p><p>Soonyoung doesn’t know exactly what the kids want to eat, indecipherable syllables crushing his ears when he tries to narrow down their hunger to a single item offered here. The ones they say they want make him question if they’re actual flavors sold here or if they’re something the kids threw in together on the spot to confuse him. He merely lists flavors of buns, watches all but one stick their tongues out when he reads the <em>mocha </em>off the sign behind the counter.</p><p>He lines himself up at the counter, watches the back doors of the bakery swing open and shut. Each swing of the doors steal a glimpse of the bakery behind--to the curve of smiles behind electric mixers, flashes of white that aren’t just from white frosting, the sing-song voice without even a melody on the rise. He watches the boy carry a metal tray to the counter, lined up with every pastry on it holding a firm dollop of icing on the top.</p><p>The line moves up, and he piques for hums of the song soothing out from the boy’s lips. His brain fills in the words for him, each note gradually hitting higher then dipping lower, but it’s the switch of songs that throw him off.</p><p>His mind flips the melody to the words of <em>Wise men say only fools rush in</em>. He blinks and the cashier calls for the next guest in line, waves her hand above the soft smile. His curiosity carries his eyes up and away from the front of the line to the boy placing an empty tray on the counter. The boy blinks blankly at the cashier and whispers something in return before taking the tray and hurrying back behind swinging doors.</p><p>He frowns a slight, but he kicks the downfall of his mood when a small hand wraps around his two fingers. He looks down and slots his fingers between Taerin’s stubby ones.</p><p>Her voice barely hums over the lunch rush of business all around. “Did he sing for you?”</p><p>Disappointment of losing another chance hits him a second time already. He tells himself he’s doing this for the kids, going out of his way to rob another soulful tune of the boy, and not for his own satisfaction.</p><p>“No, Taerin,” he mutters. He kneels down, well enough that her eyes don’t need to skirt up any higher just to look at him. When he runs a hand over her hair, she pouts at his heavy sigh. “He didn’t sing for me, but he sang a little bit.”</p><p>“Did you hear the boy sing?” his father asks as he anchors a palm on the wall to toe his shoes off.</p><p>Soonyoung’s arm surrenders to the half-promise of the day, and the side of his arm flattens up against the wall. “No,” his lips strangle the answer out, “I didn’t.”</p><p>____</p><p>Perhaps today will fare better than yesterday and the day before that. He shouldn’t crush his hopes so soon when there are seventy-five more days before he drills himself back to classes. But most of those seventy-five days throw him into his job of a mere morning, afternoon, or evening of wiping down tables and washing dishes at the back of the restaurant, somewhere more peaceful than the front of the house.</p><p>Before his mother leaves for work and his father spends a trip to the grocery store, he bids each of them goodbye, throws his apron over his shoulder, and wonders why black shirts in the summer when the sun beats down every centimeter of his skin.</p><p>In the middle of his shift, he questions the intentions of the other busser there telling him to clean up the single table left untouched since he clocked in. Monday mornings usually pass by with a table bitten by dust or even a spoon dropped. He eyes the other busser in the meantime, tosses the idea aside of ever learning his name, and walks over with a towel in his hand.</p><p>Halfway from the table and the front door, maybe it’s the perfect time to book it out of the restaurant and call it a sick day. His ears pick up a familiar tune and his eyes a flash of white. Besides the clean table he just wiped down, the boy from the bakery lights up the entire restaurant with the melody from days ago.</p><p>Soonyoung stops at his steps, twists the towel in his hands, before turning around and beelining for the back of the restaurant. He passes by the other busser, grumbles about washing the dishes back there in passing, and steps up to the sink.</p><p>“Why don’t you say hi?” startles from behind him, and a swear stutters out when a sting curses through the suds. He lifts his hand up to the crimson sinking into the bubbles and white plates, scowls at the prospect of wearing gloves and a bandage before cleaning the water out and washing the dishes without his tainted blood.</p><p>Soonyoung huffs, leaning down to drain the water with his fingertip bleeding away. “Why should I?”</p><p>“Because he kept staring at you when you walked by.”</p><p>“Did you hear him sing?” his mother asked, unbothered as he rips the top button of his shirt open and doesn’t bother working his way down to the last before he pulls it right off.</p><p>“Yeah, I did” is monotonous from his lips.</p><p>
  <em>Why did I run away this time?</em>
</p><p>____</p><p>Soonyoung hopes he won’t let yesterday stop him from walking down the street and past the bakery on his way to his early shift, especially when he offered his car keys to his mother after his father dropped her car off for repairs. He throws the apron over his shoulder, exhales hard against summer’s humidity soaking up his lungs, and starts his way down the street.</p><p>But on his way, he reaches just a handful of shops from his work when his ears pick up mellow guitar strings. He doesn’t reach too far from home for his brain to hotwire into a different route today. He turns right instead of left at the block if it means avoiding the boy from the rooftop. But even then, he slows his steps down because maybe, this once, he can listen to the boy sing from the rooftop without scaring him into retreat.</p><p>Inside, the kick of his heart tells him to walk faster, to dodge the boy’s eyes from the crime of stealing the show meant for absolutely no one.</p><p>He wonders if the wind fools him into the mischief of hope and wishful thinking, that the “Wait” dissipating behind him isn’t a joke afterall.</p><p>____</p><p>The abandoned tune sneaks up on him at seven in the morning a little scratched and nearly broken, but it warms his heart up whole when his brain wakes well enough to recognize that it’s the voice of the grandmother. When he sneaks between his curtains, he throws the covers off and hurries to the front door, jams his feet for his slippers and not for his parents’ shoes, and down the stairs.</p><p>He pulls the light cart of groceries for her, offers an arm out so she can walk without the worries of breaking a bone or the elevator doors closing in on the cart. With the grays of her hair and the wrinkles at the backs of her palms, around the smiles of her eyes, it means minimizing the time she needs to stay standing, the time needed to reach the brink of exhaustion in her tired bones.</p><p>Soonyoung remembers all the days, years ago, when she knelt by him to dust his knees and palms after he tripped on the playground. He remembers all the times his parents invited her over to share meals in their apartment, not too long after she began mistakenly cooking meals for two. But with the grays of her hair and wrinkles on her palm and around the smiles of her eyes, he never minds that she doesn’t remember all the scraped knees and kissing the reds of his palms better. He never minds that she can’t remember how much that all meant to him growing up.</p><p>So their conversation teeters into a curt one. On their way to the door, the gentle “Thank you” every time has stopped stinging just weeks ago.</p><p>The barrel of footsteps through the hallway shocks her palm over her heart as the kids dart into a flurry around them. Questions, begging to see the singing boy today and maybe this time, they can watch him sing.</p><p>After she pats each of their heads good morning, even gestures Soonyoung lean down so she pats her palm on the top of his pillow-shocked hair, she advises them to be careful when they go, to look both ways before crossing the street.</p><p>Soonyoung thinks he has no choice but to go now. He palms the sides of his legs for his wallet because this time, he’ll try to speak a word to the boy for the kids, mumble a syllable of awe about his singing or the play of his guitar. One trip back to his apartment, he washes the sleep off his eyes and brushes the stale breath off his palate. He bids his parents an actual goodbye and a promise of coming home before late afternoon for his night shift. And this time, in the elevator crowded from everywhere below his chest, he asks the kids what they would like to eat from the bakery.</p><p>“If the boy isn’t there, don’t get too sad about it,” he assures them. “There’s always next time.”</p><p>Taerin frowns as she shuffles over from the back of the group and up to his side, taking his hand into hers. “But I really want to hear him sing.”</p><p>“Maybe he can’t sing in the bakery” is more of an excuse to stop the kids from pressuring the boy to sing.</p><p>His throat locks up for the white apron the boy dons loosely around his waist behind the counter, sleeves of the button-down folded neatly and not rolled into crumples up to his elbows. The empty metal tray at his hand covers the lower part of his face, but it’s jaws working behind the metal and churning out the voice and notes throughout the bakery that shines through. His eyes trip from one corner of the bakery and back. He picks up the taps of toes on tile and light dips of heads, picking up the beats and continuing onto the next lines of the song.</p><p>And if Soonyoung compares this boy inside the bakery to the boy on the rooftop, he wouldn’t believe they are the same person.</p><p>He bids the kids to the back corner of the bakery again, to a less-disturbed corner of the place so they won’t crowd the lines. He palms for his pockets again, draws out a few bills that were slapped onto his hand just yesterday from dividing tips.</p><p>He hopes the line draws out even more as the boy crouches behind the display counter and slips in pastry after cookie after cupcake with gloved hands. Soonyoung’s mind blanks out on what to get for the kids, but his worries fret into nothing when small fingers wrap around only two of his. Taerin asks him if they can try something sweet.</p><p>But he hears the cashier’s voice from his last visit, meshing over into a new melody the boy offers to the world. He tugs Taerin’s hand to guide her over to the front counter with him, to the propped labels, and tells her to look at them all before deciding. She stills at the counter before her eyes beam the stars, above the sudden gasp of realization of what she’s hearing.</p><p>She sticks her arm out, her forefinger pressed on the glass, and it must be the first thing she laid her eyes on because it’s all she pokes at. It’s three pink layers in a single slice of cake holding the weight of strawberry slices and white frosting, a single pearl in the middle of the dollop and a possible dent into his bank account if he’s feeding each of the kids one of these. But he gives into Taerin’s pleading eyes, lowers himself down to sweep the hair off her face, and asks if she thinks the kids will take it.</p><p>When he brings out his card to pay, he swears he meets the boy’s eyes once more before he disappears into the double-doors again.</p><p>____</p><p>Six in the early evening offers Soonyoung an exhausted huff as he walks home from his shift today. He stuffs crinkling bills into his pocket, throws his apron over his shoulder, and bids each of his coworkers a goodnight on the way out the door. His ears have yet to stumble upon a song from the boy on the rooftop today and with the hours of the bakery bidding its doors to a close, he convinces himself he’s safe from running into the boy inside or outside of the bakery.</p><p>He circles around his way home, stepping close to the lobby doors but never going in. One more round won’t hurt him and for a moment, he gives into the grandmother’s tune in passing and his wonderings of where the tune came into her life, how it continued on for so much longer. He wonders about her husband, who he was too young to even share a memory with. He wonders so much about the grandmother that at the green lawns of the apartment complex, his lips stumble for the remaining words of the song.</p><p>At the break of sunset, he picks up the guitar strums and the shy voice before the bakery. He scans around for the distant song, lyrics faded from his memory at just the thought that he’s listening to the boy sing again. He nearly trips at his steps and onto the sidewalk of the bakery when the shadow stretches into the road and blurs of a boy and a guitar press into his vision.</p><p>His lips must have allowed a sound to escape--a groan of the wooden bench hitting his shin, a curse for tumbling across the seats, or the mere punch of wind out his lungs when he catches himself from face-planting into splinters--because the shadow stretches even longer and someone calls out.</p><p>“Are you okay?” echoes from above.</p><p>Soonyoung’s mind skips back and forth over the lines between answering, stilling his voice into silence, or booking the last street signs into his apartment. But his eyes fall onto the apron spread out on the sidewalk, peeking between shade and orange sunshine, and the space is enough of a distance to see his apron from the rooftop.</p><p>So he succumbs to his first choice. He trembles a breath in and out. “Yeah,” teems from his lips low, “I’m fine.”</p><p>But the chaos all over the rooftop and the narrowing shadow tell him the boy is disappearing into the rooftop again. He picks out the thud of the guitar against something solid, perhaps against the window like the last time, and dirt bits rain down not too far from the bench like the first signs of a good summer.</p><p>He counts down the seconds of silence, each bit of his heart up his throat and each chance of running away slowly molding into the form of surrender. So he stands on his toes to stifle the sound of his rubber work shoes crunching on asphalt, to scurry over to his apron and run away before the boy meets him down here. He bends down, picks up his dusty apron with a pinch of his fingers, and throws it over his shoulder again.</p><p>When he straightens back up, he groans for the throbbing on his shin and the possible bruise ready to be showcased tomorrow. He takes a step towards home, inhales a jingle of keys and a stutter into the keyhole, the ring of a bell, and the boy right in front of him. A first-aid kit in his hands, Soonyoung thinks this is the perfect time to run away.</p><p>The boy stands a slight nod taller past Soonyoung’s head, and the knit of his brows in worry fines out and lights him up younger, brighter than him. He takes the second from the boy closing the door behind him and stuffing his flush of keys into his pocket to scan at his own hands, pick out the specks of black paint and the sting of a splinter.</p><p>“I’ll get it out for you” the boy offers with a hand out. Soonyoung’s eyes trace the slender digits and the welcoming palm up, the first-aid kit in his other hand resting against his hip. Soonyoung nods his head and places his hand on the boy’s palm, warm to the touch and even warmer when the boy squeezes around his hand. A tug backwards and a settle for the two on the bench, the boy’s fingertips run gentle strokes over his palm and avoids the red spot near his thumb.</p><p>“I’m sorry about this,” the boy winces at the sound of his first-aid kit jostling at his lap. He slaps his own hand on the plastic to stop it from exploding all over the ground. The boy is quiet smiles at the corner of his eyes. White dusts his cheeks like the color has always meant to be there against the pink, palettes of the world just to paint the boy right in front of him.</p><p>He realizes he hasn’t replied to him or paid any attention to the soft fingertips flattening his own from touching the splinter. “It’s not your fault.” Soonyoung tries to smile through the loss of warmth around his hand and the flash of tweezers, the rip of an alcohol wipe open. It really isn’t, but he wishes he can blind himself of the sting out his system when the boy spits out a quick apology for the oncoming pain.</p><p>When the boy begins to dab the wipe close to the splinter, it burns and he almost knocks himself back from retracting his hand, but the boy keeps a stronger hold on him steady. The pop of his shoulder shocks the boy, has him dropping his hand entirely and nearly the first-aid kit again. The boy brings his hand over his mouth, barrels him with even more apologies and for a second, Soonyoung thinks the boy might even be crying.</p><p>Soonyoung contemplates on the possibility that he made the boy cry somehow. He’s not sure what to do and why the urge to stop him from crying overcomes the threat of tweezers and more alcohol wipes for him.</p><p>Before he can say anything and offer to pull the splinter out himself, though, the boy offers his hand back out and tells him to look away. When he slips his hand back against his, the boy doesn’t even wait before laying his hand on his lap, pinching up the skin on his thumb, and pulling the splinter out in one go.</p><p>The next second fractures the world in fanning his hand and trying to shove the meager syllables of “Thank you” together through grits of his teeth and holding himself back from telling the boy that the tweezer could have snipped his skin along the way. His eyes drift up to the concern at the boy’s eyes, the reach of the boy’s hands for his own and the alcohol wipe hidden under his palm.</p><p>He gives into the alcohol wipes when the boy starts warning him about infection, of worsening what already hurts. He lifts his hand up for the boy to hold again and thinks it’s a better time now to express his gratitude than before. So when the words do make it out his lips without the grit of his teeth, they cling shy from the edge of his lips. But the boy seems to capture the intentions through the last swipe of alcohol and Soonyoung’s last string of curses.</p><p>“I’m so sorry about this,” he says, closing up the kit and peeling open a bandage. Soonyoung smiles at the sprinkles of cartoon sunflowers on the design, and he wonders where the boy buys such cute designs.</p><p>“It really wasn’t your fault” finally manages to leave coherent.</p><p>“I don’t know,” the boy shrugs with a smirk, soft fingertips securing the sunshine on his palm, “the bench was always here.”</p><p>“It’s your singing” works faster out his lips than through his brain, and he pouts at the memory of the boy running away the first time. His eyes drop down to his lap, tracing the smile of the sun there.</p><p>When silence sits between them for too long, he risks a flit of his eyes up to the boy. He’s not sure if he wants to ask why the boy ran away the first time, to compliment him on his voice or the way he plays the guitar, or thank him and bid him goodbye forever. The bandage seems to do more harm for the conversation than the threat of opening up to another splinter when the boy mentions that it might be a better idea to not pick at the bandage.</p><p>He catches the boy’s cautious eyes on him. “Why did you run away the first time?” he drops on him all at once.</p><p>The boy shakes his head, and the veins on the back of his hand rise along the tightening grip of the kit. “I wasn’t expecting anyone to listen.”</p><p>“It’s not just me,” Soonyoung smiles at the memory of the little ones gathering around him to rob a glimpse of the boy singing on the rooftop. “The kids loved it, too.”</p><p>The boy tilts his head to the side, almost questioning the truth to his words. “The kids?”</p><p>“The kids down the street. The ones with me the other day,” he supplies with a slow nod of his head into the memory. “They kept asking me to come here with them just to see if you’ll sing or not.”</p><p>The tips of the boy’s ears wash in pink before his cheeks do, and something about the bashful chuckle into his palm and the blush refusing to melt into the dimming day spread a flutter down his chest. “Why would they?”</p><p>“Because your voice is nice,” he deadpans the fact of the day, of the summer, perhaps for as long as this boy is around.</p><p>“Oh” stills between them, stills the world around them. “Sorry to get their hopes up. And I’m sorry for troubling you like that.”</p><p>“Don’t be.” He presses down the rising edges of the bandage with his thumb. “You really do have a nice voice.”</p><p>The boy ducks his head into a “Thank you” and from this angle, Soonyoung pieces out the futile attempts to flatten his smile. When he looks up, the boy composes himself, “Hey, this is kind of late-” has Soonyoung looking up from his hand- “but I’m Seokmin.”</p><p>Soonyoung grins around the informality of their meeting, the actual stumble into their first words to each other. “I’m Soonyoung.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The next time he catches Seokmin, he’s grateful for the name off his lips and the perk of the boy’s eyebrows up at him through the windows to the sidewalk. With the night dawning on everyone, Seokmin lingers by the front door of the restaurant with a white box at his hip. Light strings dangling along the restaurant’s roof makes Seokmin look like he’s summoning more stars than there really are tonight. Wiping down his last table and loading the past plates of the night into the cart, he huffs his goodbyes on his way out the door and to Seokmin occupied with something across the street.</p><p>“Oh, these are for you.” Seokmin offers the box to him when he finally turns around. Soonyoung peeks into the clear plastic bending with just a pastry or two too much, at the smear of icing into the paper corner of the box already, at streaks of cherries blocking from a clear view to the rest of what’s in the box. There’s a croissant he remembers from his mother’s sporadic sweet cravings, the tart he bought for his father when he wanted to try something new. He wonders what he did to deserve all of these from the bakery. “They were from the last batch of the day, so…”</p><p>“Thank you, Seokmin,” speaks quietly into the patter of their footsteps down the sidewalk. His name rolls off like a gentle reminder that the name is with him this time, and he doesn’t want to let go of it any time soon.</p><p>Their feet pave paths past the restaurant and past a simple wave into the bakery, as Seokmin introduces his sister through the glass and deaf ears, then around Soonyoung’s apartment complex. When they wind their ways back to the door of the bakery, it’s coaxing Seokmin to finish the hum off the corners of his lips, off the corners of his smile and of the evening. It’s turning themselves back towards the other direction, back to Soonyoung’s home.</p><p>At the hallway of the front door, Soonyoung doesn’t catch himself humming the missing bits of the song Seokmin takes with him until his parents ask him what he’s singing.</p><p>____</p><p>Sunset bleeds across the horizon when Soonyoung squeezes in a goodbye and a goodnight to everyone over their talks of the new horror movie, slings his apron over his shoulder. He picks at the bandages on his finger, robs precarious glances at fate letting him trip on the bench again. When the corner of empty display shelves come into view, a ring of the shops’ bell comes, but the thud of the door shut doesn’t.</p><p>He looks up to the bakery door, and Seokmin flashes him a smile pinched into the containment of something. He's just not sure what, though.</p><p>With an “I just got off” from both of them, the chatter at the restaurant streams its way to his own lips, despite not joining any conversations about the new movie. “Do you want to watch a movie?” manifest out his thoughts before he can think about shutting up or think it all the way through.</p><p>He rationalizes to himself that he hasn’t stepped foot into a movie theater in a while, let alone eat overpriced popcorn he won’t dare to spill. Maybe it’s time he can step into half of those conversations at the back of the restaurant.</p><p>Seokmin’s eyebrows arch along with the spread of his hopeful smile. “When?”</p><p>He inhales, grips at his apron tighter and wishes to grip his heart tighter from beating so fast. “Right now.”</p><p>“Oh.” Seokmin glances around, pats at the flour on his collared shirt. A feather-touch at his cheek and the snow of powdered sugar in summer Seoul, a nervous chuckle follows the smile at Seokmin’s eyes. “Let me change first.”</p><p>Soonyoung becomes aware of the sweat on the back of his own neck, seeping into the collar of his uniform shirt. He thinks he should get changed, too, so “I’ll see you in a bit?”</p><p>“Wait, let me just-” Seokmin scratches his cheek- “can I have your number? I don’t want you to wait for me too long.”</p><p>Without another word, Seokmin hurries back into the bakery. Through the windows, Soonyoung watches him scramble for something behind the front counter, slapping his hand beside the register and disappearing behind it altogether. When Seokmin comes back to the door, he comes back with a napkin crushed under his palm. He opens his hand up and points to a specific spot on the napkin, holding out a pen. After Soonyoung scribbles his own number down, his jaw drops watching Seokmin rip the napkin in half before holding one half of the napkin at the center of his palm.</p><p>“I’ll see you later, then.”</p><p>“See you,” Soonyoung mirrors back into a whisper, still fazed by it all. Three steps are all he has left when he hears his name left behind him.</p><p>"Wait, Soonyoung-” clings into the air enough to spin him around- “I'll call you when I'm ready. Then I'll walk to your apartment?"</p><p>When he agrees to his plans, it's the television shop at the next block over that hits him with the smile on his face, still painted on his face like permanent ink.</p><p>A quick shower douses him in worry of what he will wear but most importantly, what he will say to his parents when he walks out of his room. It's been a while since he last stepped in the mall with someone other than his parents or his sister or any of the kids in the neighborhood, and he wonders if he worried about what he wore in those past times. When he shakes the drops out of his hair, he thinks flipping a coin would gift him better decision-making skills as he stands in front of the mirror, constantly buttoning and unbuttoning his flannel.</p><p>Four knocks and his eyes skitter to his mother poking her head at the door. "Where are you going?"</p><p>"The movies."</p><p>"With who?"</p><p>"With Seokmin."</p><p>His mother nods, but the tease that follows is something that he would never be prepared for, "So is it buttoned or unbuttoned?"</p><p>A sound curdles at the pit of his throat, anxious and clipped, anyway, and he doubts she will let that go anytime soon. He looks down at his shirt buttoned halfway up his chest, a poke of his black shirt under.</p><p> "I'm still deciding," wanes defeated from his lips.</p><p>The flannel remains buttoned. He didn't pull out his wallet for a coin, though. With his mother coming into his room and buttoning it all up for him, he thinks he can’t just waste her efforts like that.</p><p>He stands by the landline with the napkin at his palm. One unfold after another, a doodle of the sun at the corner and a phone number in the center are all that tells him that Seokmin definitely wrote this. He thinks there’s no one else who can replace the sun like Seokmin can. And when he dials the number, a full string of the trill barely hitches to pass for Seokmin to pick up his call.</p><p>And it's not the typical "Hello?" that greets him. Instead, he hears Seokmin's smile. "I was just about to call you."</p><p>"Are you ready, too?"</p><p>"I'll start walking to your place, then."</p><p>"Or we can meet halfway."</p><p>Soonyoung scans at the movie posters and names above the ticket booth. His eyes fall on the movie his coworkers have been talking about, and he suggests to Seokmin the new horror movie, but "<em>Black House</em> is almost sold out, though."</p><p>A pause in his humming, Seokmin freezes up, lets it all go with a nervous chuckle and a scratch at the back of his neck. The smile falters, and Soonyoung actually kind of hates that his suggestion is the cause of it.</p><p>He points at the cartoon rat on the movie poster. "The new Pixar movie looks good, too."</p><p>The idea revives the smile out of Seokmin, and he nods too soon, too bright into the summer night.</p><p>Perhaps Seokmin isn't a horror-movie kind of person. Soonyoung thinks that's okay.</p><p>The movie earns him a tug at his hair strands, Seokmin working his hair like joysticks. They’re long past the movie theater and let their hunger wander them some blocks down to lines of late-night market stalls and restaurants. He doesn’t mind the entire journey there at all--the giggles from kids half their height and the “Ratatouille?” erupting into “We just finished watching that!” from the other university students.</p><p>"Is it working? Am I controlling you?"</p><p>Soonyoung snorts, lifts his hand up to the one restaurant harboring customers knocking their heads back in laughter and conversations never dulling into gray, into indigo of the night. "Of course you are. You're leading me to the barbecue place over there."</p><p>Seokmin’s innocent gasp wisps by his ear. "How did you know?"</p><p>And the place they end up in bustles with people he can find on the university campus. They seat themselves at a booth, take up a table's worth of plates and food. With a tune at Seokmin's lips, they let the first few minutes succumb to the melody and his voice. Soonyoung wonders why he would ever hide something so beautiful.</p><p>"How do you know all of those kids?" Seokmin asks between bites and taking the tongs for him.</p><p>Soonyoung shrugs. "They live in my apartment building." He asks about the bakery, if it gets busy this time of the year, and if the kids are too much trouble to contain inside the bakery walls. "And if they get too much, you can tell me."</p><p>A wave of his chopsticks in the air, a pinch of his lips to stop his smile from spilling the rice out, Soonyoung loses himself in the words, in the various smiles Seokmin showcases in his two questions alone, and the restaurant lights specked at his eyes.</p><p>But then Seokmin waves a hand in front of him. "Are you listening?" He blinks, shrinks out an apology against his chest, and forces his memory to remember the last remnants of his words. "It's okay," Seokmin assures him, "I'll start over for you."</p><p>The bus leaves no leeway to step into the aisle. With Seokmin at the aisle seat, holding onto the metal railing so they both don't go toppling over, Soonyoung keeps his eyes at the window for when the lights of the bakery come into view. And when they squeeze their way past, nearly crying out for the bus driver that they still haven't stepped off, he wonders why Seokmin doubles over in laughter, pouts when Seokmin just points at him and doubles himself over again.</p><p>"Your hair," he wheezes, "what the heck did the babies behind us do?"</p><p>With Seokmin refusing to let him see his reflection on shop windows, blocking his entire view with his upper-body and out-stretched arms, Soonyoung deliberates with each step, stretches his chances of a peek with as much time as he can. When Seokmin loses himself in his thoughts, at his questions of the constellations and the night bugs nipping their skin, he books it for the next shop over, catches his hair standing at the back. The sound of Seokmin falling over and wheezing into a quiet laughter welcomes him one more time from a couple shops over.</p><p>"You let me walk around like this?" Soonyoung tries his best to feign the sting in his words and the menacing scowl, but he fails. He fails when the lingering fragments of Seokmin's laughter brightens up the street better than the streetlamps, traffic lights, fluorescent shop signs.</p><p>"I'm sorry, Soonyoung," deflates out his lungs but not from his smile. He flattens the back of his head with a pout. At the bakery, Soonyoung stops but Seokmin keeps going. "I'll walk you to your apartment building," Seokmin offers, "to make up for not fixing your hair."</p><p>And at the door of his apartment complex, he hears a "Call me when you get home" behind him.</p><p>Soonyoung snorts, "<em>You</em> should be calling <em>me</em> when you get home."</p><p>He blinks blank, laughs it off. "Yeah, you're right."</p><p>After stepping into the elevator, he notices how Seokmin begins to turn his way home only when the elevator doors start closing, as his view of Seokmin diminishes bit by bit. Up the elevator, he marks out the pink at his cheeks and the smallest of smiles at his lips, something that summer alone can never do.</p><p>The elevator pauses for a second. It might just be his heavy heart on his way home. </p><p>When he unlocks the door to his apartment, toes his shoes off and slips them to the bottom of the rack, he greets his parents, slips to his room to change into pajamas. And when the race of his heart subsides to the usual rhythm, he stands at the landline again. But he doesn't pick up the phone. His eyes fall on the granite besides the phone.</p><p>"Are you hungry, Soonyoung?" his mother asks as she passes by him. He shakes his head.</p><p>In a minute or two, his father makes his way to the hallway, pauses to try his luck at him. "Are you feeling sick? Do you need medicine from the cabinet?" He shakes his head once more.</p><p>Once his parents greet him a goodnight and head down the hall to their room, the phone rings. His head snaps at his parents just a step away from their door, already looking at him, perhaps judging him, too.</p><p>He picks up the phone with hot fingers, burns when he hears Seokmin beam an, "I just got home a while ago," despite the late hour, "and I'm getting ready to sleep."</p><p>But past the glance of skepticism exchanged between his parents, he smiles, thanks Seokmin for letting him know.</p><p>"Thank you for looking out for me." A yawn into the receiver looks out for Soonyoung tonight. "Goodnight, Soonyoung."</p><p>"Goodnight, Seokmin."</p><p>____</p><p>His morning starts off with the kitchen windows propped open, July air clinging into his lungs with every breath he takes. He'd rather enjoy the momentary sunshine than think about the rain later. The next part of his morning rolls off in his mother's giggles throughout the kitchen--from the stove to the counter, the sink to the cabinets, when she opens the fridge and when she shuts it tight. Soonyoung finally asks her what's so funny to her that he can't pick up.</p><p>"I forgot to buy bread," she begins once she can flatten her giggles into a mere smile gracing her face, smoothing out the tiredness from the past days. "When I went to the bakery yesterday, I was talking to Seokmin's mom for so long that I forgot to buy some."</p><p>He smiles, runs his fingers through his hair, and offers to head to the bakery and buy some bread from there for her. Nothing more than it seems, nothing less than that.</p><p>Sunlight indulges itself into every bit of his exposed skin, rubbing cooler palms at his arms just to realize how hot it really is outside. The walk to the bakery compresses himself into hunching over a slight when the clicks of the cart on a lone pebble punctuate the familiar abandoned tune. He squints the brightness away from the sunlight hitting the toy market basket swinging in the air and Taerin asking her grandmother, "How much bread can I fit in my basket?"</p><p>He picks up his pace when Taerin and her grandmother are only a few steps away from the television repair shop, only to poke Taerin's side and shock the passersby with her screech of surprise. She stops at her steps, clings onto her grandmother's floral dress even closer, and turns around with a pout.</p><p>"Hi, Taerin" is all he needs for her to run up to him and wrap her arms around his waist.</p><p>After greeting her grandmother and offering to push the cart for her, he asks where she's heading to and follows them into the bakery. But instead of heading straight to the shelves of loaves, his hands forget about the cart when Taerin takes one of his hands into both of hers and hurries to the front counter. He checks out what the display holds this morning, and he thinks she's more into the cake slices with flower petals and edges of white waves of icing under each strawberry, blueberry, orange slice, lime-</p><p>"What fruit is this?" Taerin looks up to him, tapping a finger on the glass. The ghost of her finger aims for a fruit tart at the middle rack. "The green one right here."</p><p>He pats her hair down and reaches out to hold onto her shopping basket. "That's a kiwi, Taerin. Did you know that the whole kiwi looks like a bird?"</p><p>She leans over, close to pressing her face onto the glass, but he lays a gentle hand on her shoulder and pushes her back a slight. Having her face printed on the clean glass is the last thing he'd want the bakers here to worry about.</p><p>Arms slip around his waist again, a dip at his hip. She flutters her eyelashes at him, asks a tiny, "Uncle Soonyoung, can you carry me?"</p><p>With Taerin perched at his hip, he leans forward, pokes a finger at each slice and asks if she wants to try that one. But when she says yes to each and every one of them, he decides that she can pick one for herself and one for her grandmother. Arms around his shoulders, tighten when she squeals against his neck, she thanks him there and then.</p><p>"I like the pink in this one," she begins at one end of the display shelves.</p><p>"The flower is pretty" at another.</p><p>"The strawberries are cut into a flower," she gasps at the third.</p><p>"My mom said these are hard to make," when they reach the macaroons.</p><p>"Oh, hey, Soonyoung" snaps his neck back up to above the display shelves. Seokmin smiles at him, dons the smear of white on his face.</p><p>An airy chuckle greets Seokmin and before he can tell him about the white on his face, Taerin beats him to it, "What's that on your face?"</p><p>The smile drops, any signs of the kind greeting draining all emotion out, and Seokmin lifts a hand up to his face, looks down to the white crumbling into his fingertips. He runs it between his fingers before holding a hand out to her, "Do you want some on your face, too?"</p><p>Her entire weight engulfs his side as she curls into him to hide away, something between a plea for help and a laugh for the chase beaming into the bakery walls.</p><p>Seokmin looks down at the white again, feels it dissolve at his fingertips. "It's powdered sugar from the brownies." He looks up, pats his hand on his apron, and the black gets chalk-marked with the sugar. "If you don't mind waiting, Soonyoung, I can get you some from the freshest batch for you and Taerin."</p><p>When Soonyoung thanks him, promises that he will wait for the new batch, Seokmin flashes him another smile that has his eyes following, too. He swears he hears someone waiting in line smother the gasp with their hand. He doesn't turn around to look, though.</p><p>In the meantime, Taerin picks a cake lined with granola at the edges because "That's what old people eat."</p><p>When Seokmin comes back behind the counter with a rack of powdered brownies and another blush of powdered sugar at his other cheek, he watches him focus on moving them from the tray to the display rack, crouching a slight to make sure each slice doesn't free fall. Then there's just one slice left in the rack, and Seokmin stands up and back around with the tray. At the counter set up behind the front counter, Seokmin plucks out a knife, cuts up the brownie into quarters, and slides them onto a glass plate.</p><p>Seokmin turns back to him and Taerin and holds out the plate to Taerin first. His smile breaks even more when she thanks him for the brownie, then holds it out for Soonyoung. </p><p>"Please give me five stars," Seokmin pleas quietly in desperation.</p><p>With a crispy top layer yet a warm, soft inside all throughout, his plea makes Soonyoung snort. "You get six."</p><p>Taerin lifts her hands in the air and "You get a million!" is lost among the bakery chatter.</p><p>Seokmin presses a hand to his chest, close to his heart, and he thinks Seokmin would cry on the spot if they weren't out in public. "Your opinion is the only one that matters to me, Taerin."</p><p>When she licks the brownie clean off her fingertips, she asks if she can change what she picked to these brownies.</p><p>His head tosses back to free his laugh at how fast she changed her decision, doesn't stop him from delving into the sound of Seokmin's own at her question. "How many do you want to get?"</p><p>"All of them."</p><p>____</p><p>It's a rare later-into-the-night shift Soonyoung lands today. Most of the shops and fast food stops surrounding the restaurant dim their lights with their hours of the next day. An occasional drone of a car lugging by in these late hours blinds behind him with its headlights on. The only other sound, besides the pick-up of the night's breeze, is the crunch of his shoes on the sidewalk.</p><p>The bakery, though, is one of the only other places where the lights are on but uncertain, there but dimming. Seokmin wipes down the glass on the display counters, nothing at the stands. A few pastries are piled in a box on the counter behind him but with the chairs flipped up and the floors a nice shine, he must be finishing soon.</p><p>He steps besides the bench, knocks on the window with the intention of just waving Seokmin a goodnight and nothing more. But when Seokmin straightens himself up from hunching into the display stands, wipes the sweat at his forehead and peers up, his face beams and the light in the bakery is more certain this way. He runs over to the door but disappears after a few steps.</p><p>Seokmin slips, lands on his butt, and Soonyoung feels awful for laughing behind the glass.</p><p>When Seokmin limps to the door with a pout, rubbing a soothing hand on his butt, he apologizes for poking fun at his misery.</p><p>"You're gonna have to make it up by staying here with me."</p><p>He scoffs, crosses his arms over his chest, "Is that supposed to be a bad thing?"</p><p>Seokmin shrugs as he dusts off his elbows and knees. "Just sit at the back so you don't slip." One glance at the trail of gray-brown behind him, "and let me mop that part again."</p><p>An apology is automatic from his lips again. "Are you okay, though?"</p><p>"Now that you're here, I am." He rolls his eyes, throws his apron over his shoulder, and situates himself at one of the higher seats at the back of the bakery so his feet won't graze the floor. Seokmin disappears into the back of the bakery but nonetheless, he begins loud over the rolling of the mop bucket, somewhere at the back of the bakery. "How was work for you, though? Did you work a long shift today?"</p><p>Soonyoung shrugs, admits nothing really happens at his work when he's not involved much with the people there, "besides the drama between other coworkers."</p><p>He appears with a mop in his hand through the double-doors. "Are you part of the drama there?"</p><p>"I try to avoid it," he sighs, props his chin at his palm. "I bet the bakery is more fun to work in. Are you usually up cleaning this late?"</p><p>Seokmin plops the mop on the floor with a splat and works his way back to the end of his marked steps. "I didn't wake up early enough to help out with inventory today, so I wanted to make it up by closing for my sister."</p><p>When the floor shines white all over again, he watches Seokmin tiptoe his way to the back of the bakery, dragging the mop bucket behind him, and swing the double-doors in and out. When he tiptoes his way back to Soonyoung's side of the bakery, he slips into the seat beside Soonyoung, asks about his day surrounding his shift today but not during it.</p><p>He can't count the number of things they talked about with both of his hands, but he can count the number of hours he spent with Seokmin. When his eyes fall on the clock, his heart skyrockets up his throat at the <em>11:23</em> and doesn't even think about the drying floor and the fact that he doesn't even have to worry about slipping anymore.</p><p>"I really have to go, Seokmin," he says, straightening his shirt and rolling the sleeves back up. "It's so late," he exasperates as he recovers from the world swirling from standing up too quickly.</p><p>Seokmin takes a look at the clock himself, apologizes for keeping him for so long. And when he follows Soonyoung out the door, Seokmin threans out a "Call me when you get home" behind him, "or else I'll call you." He turns around, walks backwards a couple of steps, and only complies to it when Seokmin's fake scowl softens up. </p><p>"Is the bakery open this late?" his mother asks when she places her book down. She stands up, pushes the dining seat in, and walks up to Soonyoung. He expected a <em>Why were you out so late?</em> that every parent except for his own seems to ask.</p><p>"No-um-when I walked home, I passed by the bakery and Seokmin was cleaning up." He shrugs. "And I just talked to him."</p><p>Which reminds him. He needs to call Seokmin that he made it home.</p><p>His mother pats his cheek, asks if he can just tell her he will be staying back a little longer next time. He nods against her palm on his cheek. When his mother bids him a goodnight and a shower might not hurt this hour because "You smell like cleaning supplies," he bids his mother a goodnight, too, an apology for worrying her.</p><p>She waves it off, though, because "It's a parent thing to worry."</p><p>He hears a sigh of relief from Seokmin, not even a sound of his voice yet, and he feels each beat of his heart at his throat. "I'm glad you got home safely."</p><p>"Thank you for looking out for me this time," he says. It might sound sarcastic for a second, but he really does mean it. "Goodnight, Seokmin."</p><p>A yawn into the receiver, a flash of a smile, "Goodnight, Soonyoung."</p><p>____</p><p>Soonyoung stuffs his wallet into his pocket when his father lifts a palm over his heart with a laugh that brings out the summer sun. "I'm craving something sweet today. I'm not sure why," his father admits with that wholehearted laugh tethering summer days down.</p><p>He offers to stop by the bakery and buy something sweet for him and his mother. Nothing more than it seems, nothing less than that.</p><p>At the bakery, the bills are long forgotten into the clutches of his digits when Taerin runs up to him with her arms in the air. It's instinct for him now to lift her up into his arms and let her perch at the crook of his elbow. With the early morning rush simmering to a bell every few minutes or so, he slowly guides Taerin down the display counter, one cake slice at a time.</p><p>When he catches Seokmin through the double-doors this time, there isn't a smear of white on his face, something he would have started to expect to stay like the mole on his cheek. There's a piping bag of white frosting in one hand and something that resembles an oversized flathead nail as he leans over to hear the other baker's words. An eye-to-eye smile passes to her, Soonyoung can make out the words of "Really? I didn't know that" from his lips.</p><p>He doesn't know why he's reading them. He's not sure why his eyes were locked there in the first place.</p><p>"Soonyoung, you're early today," breaks his pattern of pointing at each cake and asking Taerin what she thought of it.</p><p>Seokmin waves a hand in front of Taerin and his eyes disappear again for that smile when she looks up from the cakes and waves back. She curls back into Soonyoung, burying her face into his neck when Seokmin asks if she wants to see a magic trick.</p><p>She lifts her head back up then and it's hesitation all over her eyes, her fingers holding onto Soonyoung's shirt at his shoulders. Taerin's eyes don't leave Seokmin's hands when he lifts up the piping bag and the flathead. Slender fingers and a gentle squeeze of the bag, Seokmin starts with a circle at the center.</p><p>If he was being honest, it doesn't look like much. But with Taerin's focus unhindered at a mere white circle on the nail, he doesn't move.</p><p>After a couple layers of that circle filling up, it all comes together. One tweak of the nail's end at his fingertips accompanies one piping stroke at a time. One petal at a time. And before he knows it, Seokmin finishes the center of the bud, and it shocks him how quick it went.</p><p>When the flower is in full bloom, Seokmin steps back a bit to place the piping bag at the counter behind him and grab a pair of scissors. He snips the pure white rose off the flathead and if he didn't just watch Seokmin work magic with frosting, he would have thought the white rose was real.</p><p>"Let me put it on a cupcake for you, Taerin," Seokmin offers. "What flavor do you want?"</p><p>"Can you put it on a brownie?" Taerin asks.</p><p>Seokmin sputters flustered to cover his laugh. "Are you sure about that?"</p><p>She nods her head so close to his, feels her baby hairs feathering up against his temple. "Please? I like your brownies."</p><p>Seokmin rings him up this time. He watches the numbers get punched on the screen and the receipt spit out a little longer than what he intended to. But when Seokmin finishes up and tells him the price, Soonyoung points out, "You still have to charge me for the brownie and the rose."</p><p>Seokmin shakes his head. "I got it."</p><p>"Seokmin," he spits out a little shaky at the syllables, nervous for no reason he can pinpoint. With Taerin's hand in his, after setting her down on the floor, he doesn't want to heat up a debate. He sighs, hands over the cash and stuffs the change into his pocket, glossing over Taerin's stare of concern at him.</p><p>____</p><p>Shower drenches his periphery in black. He stands inside the shower and watches the water bead off the tips of his hair and drains down. A slight part of his lips, salt settles into the seam of his lips and he presses his palms to his cheeks, notices that his cheeks fever off hot and he's been crying in the shower and all his thoughts since he stepped inside are hearing Seokmin-filled melodies at the rooftop, Seokmin yanking out the splinter with careful hands, and Seokmin under the lights at the restaurant.</p><p>Will his parents be okay with this?</p><p>Will his parents tell him there's nothing to worry about when he presses his hand to his chest, right over the sound of the train of his heart going off when he thinks of Seokmin? Will his parents be okay with the reason why Seokmin's presence calms something in him that he can't quite pinpoint? Will his parents understand, when girls asked him out in high school and even in university, why he apologized to each and every one of them and hoped they will remain friends? Will his parents accept why he didn't have the heart to when his mother said, "You didn't give her a chance?"</p><p>He shuts the water off and ruffles his hair under the towel. When he steps back into his room, he catches the calendar on his wall reminding him of summer break's remaining three weeks unscathed by his marks.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The rain begins to threaten the city whole in monochrome when he sits at the bench in front of the bakery, exhausted huffs through his lungs after the kids latched onto each of his legs and begged to take them to the bakery.</p><p>"Taerin said the brownies are so, so, so, so, so, so-"</p><p>"<em>Good</em>, Uncle Soonyoung."</p><p>"And the boy singing made them so, so, so, so, so-"</p><p>"So <em>yummy</em>."</p><p>He chuckles and his head limps towards his legs. A buzz nearby, he looks up to pinched fingers holding onto a string, the end tied to the body of a beetle. Soonyoung yelps, watches the kids laugh and assure him that the beetle won't bite.</p><p>"We can't bring that inside," Soonyoung points out, closer to an excuse to get him as far away from the beetle as possible. After a wave of defeat, he tells the kids to wait here and he will buy them brownies.</p><p>At the ring of the bell, a customer at a table looks up but dismisses him. Half of the bakery is marked with wet floor signs, the other half marked with people holding onto their trays or scattered all around. Despite the looming storm, he's surprised there are people who still want to brave the imminent downhill of the weather and grab something from the bakery.</p><p>"Hey, Soonyoung" punches his heart into overdrive.</p><p>Over the counter, he catches the same white smear at his cheeks and he kind of wants to reach over and wipe them off for him. He stumbles through his greeting and when there's a tug at his hand, he looks down to Taerin looking up at him expectantly.</p><p>Seokmin gasps at the sight of Taerin. "Are you here for brownies?"</p><p>There must be something different in Seokmin because he's never seen her smile so wide before, so much so that her smile shoves for room and finds them in her eyes. She takes a step towards the counter, holds onto the edge with her one hand without letting Soonyoung's hand go, and tiptoes enough for her periphery to scrape by the countertop. "Did you make brownies today?"</p><p>Seokmin lowers himself behind the counter, levels himself out as close to Taerin's height as he can. "I make them everyday, Taerin," through the smile that makes him think he's mirroring Taerin's. "Can you wait a bit for them? I'm making a fresh batch right now and they're still in the oven. I'll make sure you get the first one."</p><p>A frenzy nod of her head and a beaming smile, her eyes following Seokmin on his way back to his actual height, he wonders what Seokmin laced those brownies with because he catches his eyes following him on his way back up, too. "Did you want four like last time?"</p><p>Soonyoung glances at the kids outside, takes a mental headcount. He sighs, "How much is half a tray?"</p><p>____</p><p>The days of summer stack up against them. Soonyoung wants to run away from the idea that this might just be a summer thing, that the moment they head back to school, they won't have anything close to this. He would hate to lose this much of Seokmin, but maybe he just wants to know that he’s not the only one.</p><p>So when he invites him over to his apartment, chases him around after sliding with their socks across wood and tile, nothing stops him from backing Seokmin up against the wall and with a slight tip of his toes up.</p><p>Closing the space between them until there's only a breath closing them up, he whispers over Seokmin's lips, "You're not telling me to stop."</p><p>Under the shadows, Seokmin's ears light up in pinks and his lips paint the walls in blank stares and mute stutters. Soonyoung drops from the tips of his toes before stepping back, watches him stay frozen in the spot.</p><p>Seokmin shakes his head a slight. "Maybe I didn't want you to."</p><p>His mind runs haywire when the space closes up, when Seokmin's eyes flutter shut closer to him. It's a chaste kiss, a mere press of their lips together. And then it's palms painting warmth all over his cheeks, languid strokes under his eyes.</p><p>His heart beats hard in his chest, and he wonders if Seokmin can hear it.</p><p>When they part, a press of their foreheads together in the dark does nothing to hide the smile glowing across Seokmin's face. A second kiss that runs off of innocence and nothing more, Soonyoung wants to pinch himself to convince himself this is real.</p><p>That night, his parents probe for the smile on his face, the blush on his cheeks. He shakes his head, and he's thankful they don't ask any more after.</p><p>----</p><p>The rain swallows up the city as a whole. Seokmin's house isn't saved from the rain, either. They watch the rain from Seokmin's room, perched at his bed. No one else roams around the house besides the two of them, with Seokmin's sister and father running the bakery down below with a couple extra people. Even with Seokmin's mother out to visit her aunt at the next city over, there's more than enough food she prepared to fill up the dining table and the counter.</p><p>A tune makes its way between them, a little too hopeful for something as dreary as the rain. But then Seokmin keeps singing, anyway, slots his digits warm between Soonyoung's. Seokmin's fingers tap against the back of his palm in a foreign rhythm, but it halts not too long after.</p><p>Seokmin traces the cut on his finger from work and the healed patch of skin where he plucked the splinter off. Scabs from unloading boxes and dotting lines of scars rising up red from caring careless about where the box cutter aims and whenever he takes the blame for broken dishes for the new bussers at the floor.</p><p>"You hurt your hand a lot," sounds down. It doesn't sound like it came from Seokmin.</p><p>"Yeah, I guess," he mutters, watches Seokmin's fingertip roam over creases of his palm, tickles the outline of his hand. Seokmin flips his palm over to map out the dashes of box cutters and sidewalk crashes, stumbles of his digits into the right places at the wrong time, and tracks of red where he scrubbed his hands too hard in the restaurant.</p><p>He traces the scowl on Seokmin's face, slight frown at his lips, and assures him, "It's nothing."</p><p>He tugs his hand back for a split second, but the tug in the opposite direction relaxes all the muscles in him. He feels his arm straighten out and a lift of his hand even higher. He watches his hand rise with Seokmin's under his palm, watches Seokmin's lips delve into every knuckle, across each scratch patching up by skin-work of time, along healing blemishes from the busiest days at the restaurant and the most mundane ideas outside.</p><p>----</p><p>Summer sheds gentle all over Soonyoung's skin. Last summer held the last time he has ever stepped foot into the field just shy from the city's bustle but for all he knows, he's the only person to ever come here. The  sun surrenders to the stars and the moon, and the field trickles up his ankle, up his shins, up until his knees buckle and the weight drags him down. A crush of his lungs in the best way possible, towers of grass consume his periphery but doesn't take over anywhere close to a smooth stroke at his cheek and the tip of Seokmin's nose at his jaw. He runs his fingers through Seokmin's hair, hot against the heat cooling down the sky and sweat paves lines of his palms from their chase down street blocks and uneven dirt of the hills, to the rolling fields overlooking the hustle of the city.</p><p>Seokmin's words stifle into the hem of his shirt. "I've never been here before."</p><p>"You missed out," Soonyoung smiles.</p><p>The weight lifts off his chest and Seokmin sits up, allows the horizon to halo him in a break of pink and blue, occasional white sparks. "It's so pretty here," Seokmin sighs. The highs of their run here ease off his shoulders, unwinds the tension at his muscles as he relaxes on his knees.</p><p>He sits up, props himself on his elbows, and the earlier weeks' rain drenches the back of his shirt cool with the oncoming breeze. He reaches out in front of him, searches for Seokmin's hand somewhere. Fingers curl away at the proximity of his, and it punches him awful for a second. "They can't see us here," he assures him.</p><p>The moon borrows its rays from Seokmin's smile at his revelation. Warmth at his cheek and innocence of his lips, he smiles into the kiss, falls back to the grass when Seokmin lets him. He holds onto Seokmin, feels arms around his waist that he tries to return. He settles for wrapping his arms around Seokmin's shoulders, thinks it's a better choice when Seokmin pulls away and starts humming a song. And every sound thrums across his shoulder, at the base of his neck into a lullaby.</p><p>"Soonyoung, are those fireflies?" Seokmin's voice trembles at the brink of a sob and a gasp. After a pinch at his neck and Seokmin's outburst of apologies, some flowing into the failing against the tears, he takes Seokmin to the depths of trees when each one of his "It's okay, Seokmin" and "I'm sure it was just an ant" is swamped with a "No, it's not, Soonyoung" or "What if it's venomous?"</p><p>"Seokmin, <em>shhh</em>," attempts to escape threatening, but it's nothing close to it when the chuckle teeters and slips too easily from his mouth.</p><p>They wait, and they wait. The waiting game plays at their fingertips, tapping at their sides until they tread into the air and tapping at their sides becomes tapping on a knuckle or two, drawing a line up a palm, until it's tapping fingertips onto the back of Seokmin's hand and a kiss pressed against Soonyoung's own. Wet streak a centimeter or two off from the kiss, he catches the drying trail of tears at Seokmin's cheek, the pink at his eyes and cheeks long after Soonyoung held his face in his hands and told him the first time that he's okay.</p><p>And the waiting game dims down to the gasp beside him once a near-neon green dot frees onto the trunk of a tree. Then it's a second on the branch above and a third on a leaf, and the world slows down at the precious sound of Seokmin's tiny giggle. </p><p>They drop their hands once the field is behind them. Soonyoung understands; Seokmin understands. There isn't much they can do about it.</p><p>"I wish I could hold your hand," Soonyoung mutters once the fence is a blur behind them.</p><p>Seokmin makes it up to him with a tune at his lips, a <em>You're just too good to be true</em> that makes him forget about the frown from earlier. </p><p>____</p><p>Late in the afternoon, Soonyoung wipes the sweat off his face with the back of his hand and tosses his apron over his shoulder. He passes by the bakery, takes one step closer towards his home and past the bakery's door, wonders if Seokmin is in there somewhere, before he takes one step backwards and decides to enter inside. A tune warming up the bakery behind double-doors, he buys a couple of cookies, something he thinks his parents will like but haven't tried yet. With the clouds tumbling in fast, he wonders if he can make it home dry if he shoves everyone out of line right now to pay and bolt it straight home.</p><p>But the first raindrop paints on the glass before he makes it out the door. He looks down at the paper bags of cookies that will be drenched by the time he comes home.</p><p>But Seokmin knows. He just knows.</p><p>Above the curves of the double-doors, he catches the top half of Seokmin’s face. It’s enough of a sparing glimpse to draw out the sugar under his eye, to continue the drawing at his cheek. A hand above his head, a finger pointing around the bakery, Soonyoung can’t help but try to hide his grin at his miming of opening an umbrella.</p><p>An offer to walk him home with the security of his big umbrella, one his parents and sister sometimes bicker to use, Seokmin holds the umbrella between the two of them and allows him to complete the picture of the sugar streak on his cheek. The rain parades at their shoes and even towards the calves of their pants, but something about Seokmin chuckling when they pass by the threat of a kid jumping into a puddle makes walking in the rain worth it, has him reaching up and dusting it off with his fingertips.</p><p>Once Seokmin shakes the drops off at the front steps of the lobby, Soonyoung invites him in to thank him, that his mother bought watermelon and he can cut it up for him, let him take some home to his parents and sister.</p><p>After stepping into the apartment and propping their shoes up to dry faster, he tells Seokmin to wait in his room and he'll bring some sliced watermelon right over. He smacks a hand on the watermelon at the counter, hisses at the sting there, but at least he knows it's a good watermelon. His mother always picks a good watermelon.</p><p>Sliced up and on a plate, he leaves the other quarter of the watermelon for Seokmin to take home. He'll pack it later, after they eat this one. But when he returns to his room with the plate, Seokmin lies flat across his bed with his head towards him at the door, quietest snores rumbling from the pit of his throat. There's a hand on his chest.</p><p>Soonyoung smiles alone in the dark. He places the plate at his nightstand and retreats from the spot, towards the other side of his room. He sits down there, at the wall, and watches Seokmin soak up the summer grays and each sound of the impending storm.</p><p>Five minutes tick off from the clock when Seokmin groans, shoots himself to sitting up, and looks around. He watches shoulders relax, his fingers freeing the tight grip on his sheets. There's a smile of relief on his face when Soonyoung offers one back, tells him he can go back to sleep if he's feeling like it.</p><p>Seokmin lies back down and turns to his side this time, facing the wall, facing the wall he's leaning against. "Sorry for falling asleep," he mutters more into his pillow. "I restocked in the morning, and it was a lot more this time."</p><p>"It's alright" is quiet with the way Seokmin's eyes scatter all over his face.</p><p>The smile drops when Seokmin closes his eyes. And he takes this time to scoot himself forward, not too far from the edge of his bed. And when Seokmin opens his eyes again, not even a breath can dissipate between them without feeling it over each other's lips.</p><p>Seokmin must have caught something on his face because his eyes are moving but his lips aren't. He moves his head over his pillow, props an arm so he can perch his chin there, and Soonyoung can't fight the heat at his cheeks and the race of his heart at how Seokmin is looking right at him, that he might be all he's looking at.</p><p>At the same time, Soonyoung maps out the mole at Seokmin's cheek, the bow of his lips, and another mole hidden at the arch of his eyebrow. His heart races in fear this time of going closer. But he thinks it's something he shouldn't be worrying about, getting any closer to Seokmin. It's his bed they're on, in his own room. He's kissed Seokmin, held his hand. He even kissed Seokmin out in the open, where he fears more than here.</p><p>But then Seokmin pushes himself back, closer to the wall. A drum of his fingertips at the pillow besides his head, and Soonyoung hesitates to slip beside him, but he does. Soonyoung is so, so close to Seokmin that when he lifts his hand, he traces the fading scar near his eye, runs a soft fingertip there. He watches Seokmin scrunch that eye shut and tries to keep his other eye open.</p><p>"What happened here?"</p><p>"Inventory," Seokmin chuckles, and he smiles softly close to his palm. It fades when Soonyoung drops his hand, sends the smile to Soonyoung when their fingers lace together between their heartbeats. "My sister and I are careless with the box-cutter, too."</p><p>His smile drops at the thought of the pain and the blood, the sight of red at his vision for a moment. His smile drops, both of theirs do, but for Seokmin, it's with the quiet question, "Can I move closer?"</p><p>It's an innocent question, he realizes it now, especially when all this time, he finds himself stepping closer to Seokmin. How he never needed words off his lips because Seokmin's were just about to ask the same thing.</p><p>He leans over closer, the side of his face warming up against Seokmin's neck, and he feels Seokmin's arms slip around him, around his shoulder and across his back.</p><p>"You know," Seokmin starts off light and airy into a joke, "I thought Taerin was your baby sister."</p><p>Soonyoung snorts against his neck, buries himself closer to the warmth. "What made you think so?"</p><p>"You always come into the shop with her," he admits, and Soonyoung feels his fingertips drumming up his spine. "When I saw you with Taerin the second time, I told myself, 'Okay, I have to impress this dude's baby sister if I want him to like me.'"</p><p>At those words, Soonyoung feels his heart flip in his chest at his possible extra efforts, relaxes against him as he thinks that Taerin found no trouble falling for Seokmin.</p><p>A beep from the front door startles his dreams out. Warmth shields a patch at the small of his back, a snore rumbling against his neck. He remembers Seokmin and his assumptions of Taerin. He remembers Seokmin, he remembers his mother coming home at this time, but he doesn't remember telling his mother about Seokmin.</p><p>The thought sends him stumbling out of his bed in fear of what his parents would think. He hasn't told them about this, has never hinted anything about this. Standing up and stretching for a split second, he flattens his palm over his hair and heads out to the kitchen, where the light flickers back on.</p><p>His mother sets her lunch bag down on the kitchen counter and asks if he ate already, if he ate the entire other half of the watermelon she bought.</p><p>He curses under his breath. The plate sits still full at his nightstand before he and Seokmin have fallen asleep. He scratches the back of his head, admits he hasn't tried it and has Seokmin over to eat some with him. His mother glances at the cutting board abandoned at the counter, knife lying over the wood, and the watermelon still cut open.</p><p>One knowing glance at him, he apologizes to his mother and offers a pleading smile with clasped hands, "We were tired from work, but we really wanted to eat some."</p><p>His mother rarely gets mad, but he isn’t expecting the gentle pat of his cheek and a "Does Seokmin want to stay for dinner?"</p><p>Soonyoung stutters, wonders if his mother is thinking the same thing or if he's bad at hiding it all together. "I-I'll...let me ask him."</p><p>When he goes back to his room, Seokmin sits up at the end of his bed, biting into a slice of watermelon. But once their eyes meet, he stops in the middle of chewing, slice hanging under his lips, and he looks like he just got caught doing what isn't supposed to be.</p><p>The laugh tumbles out before the reassurance that his mother isn't mad about the watermelon. When Seokmin continues on with another bite, he asks if he wants to stay for dinner tonight, "My mom asked if you wanted to."</p><p>Seokmin blinks at that, as if he wasn't expecting it at all. "If it isn't too much trouble for your mom."</p><p>Soonyoung shakes his head. "Did you want to say hi to her?"</p><p>The warm hug that his mother opens up to Seokmin assures him that his parents are okay with him, that they like Seokmin more than all their trips into the bakery combined. His father offers to drop him home so he doesn't have to bare out in the aftermath of the rain, and he refuses to let him walk home at this late hour. A goodbye over his father's shoulders and Seokmin following right behind him, umbrella and a plastic bag with a container of watermelon slices and another of cold noodles, Soonyoung hurries to the door, shoves his shoes on, and says he wants to come. He rationalizes to himself that it’s mostly so it won't be too awkward for Seokmin to sit in the car with his father and partly so his mother can relax in the silence after his promise of washing the dishes once he returns.</p><p>When Seokmin takes the passenger's seat in the front and Soonyoung slips in the back, his father's way of opening up to Seokmin is one he would never have thought of. It punches him in embarrassment. "Is it true you can sing, Seokmin?"</p><p>Seokmin stutters from the nerves at his lips, falters a smile that usually loses anyone else's sight of his eyes. "I-I guess. I'm okay at it."</p><p>His father eases the tension in the car, though, with a hearty laugh as he points a thumb towards the backseats. "At the start of summer, he's been wanting to hear you sing."</p><p>Even in the dark, he can pick out the pink at Seokmin's ears, something that happens, he notices, when someone compliments him. The car becomes quiet but when the song on the radio changes, Seokmin begins to follow it with a shallow hum. He notices the lift of his father's lips up.</p><p>"You sing just lovely, Seokmin," his father says before he parks in front of the bakery. The pink washes up his skin and he thanks his father for driving him home. "You're just down the street, Seokmin, but you're always welcome in our home."</p><p>They wait in the car for Seokmin to go inside. Once they can make out Seokmin waving from his window on the second floor, they wave back and begin turning home. The car singes in an awkward silence, and his father doesn't say anything to him.</p><p>He's scared of that silence.</p><p>____</p><p>His shift ends in the afternoon again, but he would be glad if his boss were to ask him to stay a little longer, to cover or someone for the rest of the day. There's an awkwardness in the morning that steers him away from home, away from his parents' stares finding something they might be wrong about. So when he tucks his nametag into his pocket that afternoon, he asks Seokmin if he wants to see the fireflies again, since the weather lady this morning called for a mere cloudy day--no rain, not much sunshine, either.</p><p>The field stands usually calm in the breeze at this time. After eating at the stall up the street, they accompany the stars this time. They don't accompany the fireflies, though, not with Seokmin laughing his heart out.</p><p>From the trees, he watches Seokmin dart across the field, arms wide open in the air, and releases a shrill scream that stops his heart for a second. His stomach burns and his lungs scream in desperation for air to replace the laughter with. When he warns Seokmin that he's scaring the fireflies off, it's futile when Seokmin screams shrill again, raising his voice to deaf-defying pitches.</p><p>Soonyoung ponders how silly it would be to join Seokmin in the field, screaming his lungs without mercy. But he rolls his apron up and stuffs them into his deep pockets. Through the field, he chases after Seokmin. And when Seokmin screams a third time, Soonyoung screams right after him.</p><p>When his thighs start burning and his entire system is in need of a forgiving breath of air, Seokmin steps so close, cups his face in his hands and traces under his eyes. He thinks he's a little gross right now with the mix of sweat from the run around the grass and his shift all plastered at his face. But then Seokmin tilts his head up a slight and smiles into the kiss.</p><p>Soonyoung slips his hands over Seokmin's own, encases them and feels every movement of Seokmin's fingertips against his palms.</p><p>____</p><p>Soonyoung kicks a tad at Seokmin's foot and they watch a pebble stuck from the slates and tumble off the edge of the rooftop. After telling Seokmin’s mother that they will be careful at the rooftop, they sit down with a space between their shoulders but their clasped hands hidden behind them.</p><p>"When do classes start for you?" Soonyoung treads the question in the air and throws the second question of how many more days of this do they have before they might not have any of this again.</p><p>"In a couple of weeks," he replies, adds onto a tap of his toe onto Soonyoung's heel. Soonyoung lets his heel skitter across the rooftop. "What about you?"</p><p>"Same."</p><p>"Are you ready?"</p><p>"No."</p><p>"Same."</p><p>They share quiet smiles across the rooftop. There may be ten or so days of summer left but for now, with the sunset threading across the skies, he thinks they have a little more than that. Seokmin eases the world into one of his tunes, gentle at the ears and swaying to the heart, something relieving to the aches of the soul. Soonyoung finds himself swaying to the words, bumping into Seokmin's shoulder.</p><p>It's calm in the afternoon's tilt into the hours. Not too long after, a cold pierce at his cheek disrupts the calm, the first drop of rain today.</p><p>"We should go inside.”</p><p>Seokmin nods and stands up, guards an arm behind Soonyoung as he crawls his way through his window. But instead of settling at the floor of Seokmin's room, a palm slips against his and drags him from the window, from Seokmin's bed. He nearly trips downstairs in the rush of their way down to the first floor, to the back of the bakery. Gray skies can't suck out the color when he notices the open patch of ground at the back of the bakery, fenced off by wooden slabs.</p><p>And the rain drenches him whole.</p><p>Soonyoung looks up to the clouds and to the rain and to Seokmin. When he looks beside him to the gate propped open, he shakes Seokmin's hand off in instinct.</p><p>But Seokmin simply gives him an understanding smile.</p><p>He joins Seokmin at the puddle, lets him jump in and splash a wave all over Seokmin's drenched shorts. It reminds him of his childhood, this moment and Seokmin all around.</p><p>"Seokmin, Soonyoung," he hears over the rain. His head snaps up to Seokmin's mother waving them over from the back door of the bakery. One glance at Seokmin, and they hurry towards her. "You might get sick."</p><p>"I'm so sorry," Soonyoung heaves out just as the rain heaves down on them even harder, buries the puddle.</p><p>"It's no trouble at all." A soft comb of his hair away from his eyes with her fingertips, Soonyoung smiles into the gentle gesture. "I'm just worried."</p><p>Back in Seokmin’s bedroom, Seokmin refuses no other answer when it comes to throwing Soonyoung’s clothes into the washing machine and using the dryer for the first time in a while. "You can shower and borrow my clothes in the meantime." With a folded towel in his hands and Seokmin's sweatshirt, a pair of shorts piled up, he stares at the clothes. "Come on, my mom is telling me to tell you."</p><p>With their clothes in the dryer, Soonyoung doesn't mind if he stays in Seokmin's sweatshirt. It's oversized, warm, and comforting all around. The pair of shorts sag at his hips but with one tug of the drawstring, he manages it around his waist without needing to drag them back up all the time.</p><p>They sit on Seokmin's floor, keeping themselves quiet there. There isn't much space between them and if Soonyoung leans forward, his forehead would perch perfectly at Seokmin's shoulder. And Seokmin barrels in questions about him--if he lived in this city his entire life, if his sister lives with him, "Isn't it funny how we both have an older sister and only an older sister?"</p><p>Upon all those and telling him about Taerin and the kids from the neighborhood, his words stop with Seokmin’s distant stares distant, yet there's a hint of a smile somewhere. Barely at his lips, taken up by the softness at his eyes.</p><p>"What?" Soonyoung runs a hand over his face. There shouldn't be anything left on his face after showering, but he still asks, anyway, "Do I have something on my face?"</p><p>Seokmin shakes his head, and his smile breaks even bigger. "No, I-I'm sorry."</p><p>"What?"</p><p>"I wasn’t focused on what you just said."</p><p>His lips part and he's sure that his ears are pink at this point. He rolls his eyes, lets out a huff of breath through his nose, all in a joke's intention. But Seokmin must have thought of it differently. Because Seokmin crawls through the space between them, cups his face in his hand, lifts a kiss to his lips.</p><p>"I'm sorry," he whispers over his lips before a second kiss.</p><p>He shakes his head, chuckles a slight. "I did it before, remember?"</p><p>Seokmin's eyes of worry drowns into his smile. "We're even, then."</p><p>To do this so freely in his own home, where his parents are just a door's knock away, Soonyoung wonders if his parents are aware of this, of Seokmin, of Soonyoung.</p><p>"What?" Seokmin asks.</p><p>"Do your parents know?" slips out his lips so easily. Seokmin drops his hand from his face to sit up before him. A search across his face, Seokmin nods. The next question is partly to keep his guard high of what his parents might say and partly to make sure that Seokmin's parents are okay with him bringing Soonyoung home, spending his summer's time like this. "If-if you don't mind, what did they say?"</p><p>Seokmin smiles the world at him. "They told me their love for me doesn't change at all." But the smile drops into his next thought, "But they told me to be careful showing it because some people don't think the same way they do." A flash of relief hits him, cuts off when Seokmin asks, "Do your parents know, too?"</p><p>Soonyoung shakes his head, Seokmin's face drops, and the urge to apologize comes up without a reason to.</p><p>"Take your time with it, Soonyoung." Seokmin runs his fingers through his hair, cups his face and kisses his cheek. "You don't have to tell your parents just because I told mine."</p><p>Soonyoung looks down at his lap, to his fingers pricking the skin of his nail. "Were you scared to tell them?"</p><p>When Seokmin nods, his face rests into unease and he sits back. "I've known my parents all my life, but so much of them is still a mystery." He looks up from his lap, notices the blur at his vision. "So yeah, I <em>was</em> scared to tell them." He lets a puff of air out, more like a sad excuse of lightening the topic than anything. "And I cried telling my sister before telling them."</p><p>Soonyoung freezes up at telling his parents one day, if he does, if he can even gather up half the courage Seokmin had. His heart races and his vision blurs into its entirety and suddenly, Seokmin has his face in his hands again, assures him one more time that he doesn't have to tell his parents now or anytime soon.</p><p>____</p><p>Seokmin stares out the window of his kitchen just as the thunderstorm solidified into one of the worst this season. He elbows Seokmin there, leans over the sink, and asks if he wants to sleep over for the night.</p><p>"I'm nervous to ask my parents," Seokmin admits lowly.</p><p>With an okay from his mother, Soonyoung asks if Seokmin can call his parents about it. A scratch of his head muting the silence, Seokmin sighs in relief when his mother offers to call his parents for him. A shy nod, Soonyoung's mother pats Seokmin's cheek to assure him, "I'll let you know what they say."</p><p>Seokmin and Soonyoung stand at the other side of the counter, opposite of his mother's end with the home phone in her hand. Seokmin spells out his phone number for her and after a couple seconds, the "Hello? Oh, Junghwa!" rattles at Seokmin's nerves. After passing greetings, how are you's, she explains that Seokmin is here at her home with Soonyoung, that the thunderstorm is getting stronger and it might be safer for Seokmin to stay over this once. "He'll just borrow Soonyoung's clothes for the night."</p><p>He lifts his pinky from his side, pokes Seokmin's own. Seokmin doesn't even move from the spot, doesn't even tilt his head down, when his pinky searches for Soonyoung's, hooks them together for a second. Only for a second, because by the time his mother says Seokmin's parents are fine with him staying, the conversation shifts into recipes and the sales they have to catch all over this city and the next.</p><p>They take that as a better yes than they thought.</p><p>The night dwindles down to Seokmin in his shirt and pajama pants. He chuckles at his ankles peeking under the ends and swallows hard at how his shirt is a little tight at his arms. One pile of blankets and pillows onto his bed, a second on the linen sheets spread over the floor, Soonyoung tells him that the guest should sleep on the bed.</p><p>Seokmin is reluctant at first, sits at the edge of his bed and locks his eyes to his fingers at his lap. Soonyoung takes a step, just enough to slot himself between his knees, and a tilt of his head up, it takes a quiet peck at his lips to give in.</p><p>He swears the door clicked open in the middle of the night. When he opens his eyes, the door is open a slight and the bed is all sheets. He props himself up on his elbows, peers past the edge of the mattress and finds it empty--empty of Seokmin, pillows, his blanket. He turns himself over fully and the pillow he let Seokmin borrow rests besides his head. The blanket he let Seokmin borrow layers itself over the one he's using.</p><p>When the door squeaks open, Seokmin walks in with a rub at his eyes. A freeze in his steps when his eyes fall on his, Seokmin's voice drowns in sleep, "I went to the restroom." When Seokmin sits down beside him, back against his bed, "You looked angry while you were sleeping."</p><p>"Did you sing me a lullaby?" he jokes.</p><p>Even in the dark of the early morning, he can make out the outline of Seokmin's smile. "Yeah, kind of." The blush creeps its way. Seokmin stands up to perch himself at the edge of his bed and stays there. Embarrassment rushes through him and he refuses to turn around to Seokmin. "I think you got angry because I talk in my sleep."</p><p>Soonyoung snorts, finally turns around. He lifts his hand up, searching for Seokmin's in the dark. And when Seokmin threads their hands together, he pulls Seokmin down to lie beside him.</p><p><em>Seokmin is made to be hugged</em>, comes to mind first when Seokmin slips his arms around his waist, buries his face into his shoulder, and pulls him close. So close that there's a smile against his jaw. Soonyoung slips his arms under Seokmin's, tries to hug him just as tight.</p><p>When he wakes up a second morning, his fingers cling onto cloth. His face burrows into something soft and secure, reassuring and comforting. He wakes up to his forehead pressed onto the dip of Seokmin's shoulder blades. With his arm around Seokmin's waist and Seokmin's hand resting on top of his, he feels his heart slow down. And when he pulls Seokmin even closer, it elicits a quiet groan from the taller.</p><p>Seokmin flips around, falls forward until his face rests against his chest. "Will your parents be up soon?" he mumbles.</p><p>He checks the time, sees that it's five and in less than an hour, his mother will wake up. His father will follow suit to cook with her before he bids her a goodbye to work. When he relays that information to Seokmin, there's a light kiss at his chest after Seokmin tells him he'll go back to his bed.</p><p>Soonyoung hugs him tighter. "Do you have to?"</p><p>Seokmin pulls himself back and he feels fingers run over the side of his face, under his eyes. "I'm just-with your parents, I'm worried." He hears an exhale, words simmering down. "I don't know how to explain it."</p><p>It's Seokmin looking at him so distant before his eyes flutter up. One more look, Soonyoung leans forward, pecks him on the lips once, and slips his arms off. But his arms don't give way, not when Seokmin cups his face in his hands, lands a kiss at his forehead. He watches Seokmin grab the blanket and pillows on his way up, plop them on his bed. He watches Seokmin lose balance slipping into his bed and with an awful, cracky laugh breaking the morning at his voice, Seokmin finally makes it to his bed in one piece.</p><p>After washing the dishes and Seokmin bidding his parents a goodbye and "Thank you for letting me stay during the rain," the weather calms down to a drizzle. They walk to the bakery this time, since his parents have taken both cars in the assumption that Seokmin will stay for another night. With the umbrella handle holding both of their hands, they make it to the back of the bakery with Seokmin closing the gate shut.</p><p>Seokmin tilts the umbrella to their side, completely blocking the view of the backdoor to the bakery. Soonyoung tries to blink the drop at his eyelashes to see what Seokmin tries to do here, but his eyes flutter back shut.</p><p>One quick press of his lips, in the rain, in the open. It's quick, exhilarating, but so, so innocent. But when Seokmin pulls back and brings the umbrella back up, he can't help himself from smiling so hard.</p><p>When he makes it back home, he catches his reflection in passing. There's a smile on his face and pink blossoming his cheeks and ears. He doesn't think it's from the rain this time.</p><p>____</p><p>Soonyoung kicks his work shoes off and trades them for sandals, tosses his apron and sweat-stained shirt in the laundry basket for a tank top and basketball shorts. He thinks he'll visit the bakery today with blind hope of discovering Seokmin behind the counter again, like all his other summer days. He's never asked about his schedule and maybe one day, he'll learn it enough to keep it.</p><p>But he makes it to the front counter, tapping his toes when he can't find the boy anywhere. He smiles at the cashier from all his visits to the bakery, twists his lips into a smile that doesn't resonate with the disappointment that he can’t see Seokmin bouncing between the front and the back or discover his voice in the pockets of the bakery.</p><p>"Is Seokmin here today?" he asks as he slips the loaf of bread onto the counter. Perhaps it's something his mother would like.</p><p>The girl's eyes scrutinize his every move before he side-steps and steps back to the same side. "Are you Soonyoung?"</p><p>"Yes?"</p><p>"Oh, he's busy right now."</p><p>The grip of the basket loosens a bit at his hand. Seokmin might be the kind of person to tell him, would have maybe called him beforehand if he was going to be busy today. But nonetheless, he mutters out an "It's okay" and his hopes that things will be okay.</p><p>That night, he calls Seokmin, frowns when he's sent to voicemail. He just hopes that Seokmin is okay.</p><p>____</p><p>"Soonyoung, Seokmin is on the phone," his father calls out to him. He throws the blanket off his bed and when he's at his bedroom door already, he tells himself to tone it down a bit because the awkward air remains long into this end of summer. Maybe his response was too quick. He presses his palm over his chest before opening the door.</p><p>He scratches his head, pretends that his eyes never peeled open so fast. But there's a grin at his father and a sputter of a laugh when he squints at the brighter sunlight in the kitchen. When his father hands the phone over to him, he ruffles his hair in passing, sends a whine out of him because his brain is never ready for it this early into the hours.</p><p>"Morning, Seokmin," he greets once his father stepped into the hallway and out of his sight.</p><p>"Good morning," he can hear the smile in Seokmin's voice all the same. "Sorry, I called you so early." Soonyoung shakes his head and after a quick look at the clock, assures him that he should be waking up before eleven, anyway. "So my parents are asking if you want to have dinner here, since I ate maybe five meals in your home."</p><p>He chuckles, tells him it's nothing to worry about.</p><p>"They said they wanted to cook you at least one meal before the summer ends."</p><p>Soonyoung sighs at the last words of his sentence. Not even a week brandishes on the calendar before summer ends and classes start. But he agrees, thinks he should formally meet Seokmin's parents outside of the pretenses of bakery visits and rooftop hideouts.</p><p>By the time he enters Seokmin's house through the back doors, a quiet peck at his lips once the gate shuts behind them, Seokmin takes him up to his room. His parents will be off in an hour and his sister has managed to find other workers filling in for them this once.</p><p>But in his bedroom, Seokmin doesn't bother to reach a hand out to turn the lights on. A nervous thump lives in his heart when Seokmin turns around, tears brimming at his eyes.</p><p>"Soonyoung," Seokmin chokes out, dragging the back of his palm over his eye, dragging the back of his other palm over his eyes, until it's sobs against the evening and into the cup of his hands over his face and Soonyoung wishing he knew what to do and why this is happening. The second "Soonyoung" surfaces but drowns into a second string of sobs, drowns his ears into the saddest thing he can hear.</p><p>Everything pricks at Soonyoung's eyes at first, stings his nose, and he wishes it’s the ghost of summer breeze filling his eyes with tears. He wishes it isn’t Seokmin's cries unhindered and vulnerable under the stars. He wishes it isn’t Seokmin's sharp inhale crushing his shoulders before his voice withers out cold, "I'm leaving in two days."</p><p>"What?" Soonyoung whispers, and his shoulders give into the weight and the punch at his heart. "You're leaving?"</p><p>"I'm sorry, Soonyoung," trembles from his lips, "I'm so, so sorry."</p><p>"Are you coming back next summer?" hopeful from his lips, almost sadly so.</p><p>But the waver of Seokmin's eyes anywhere closer to him cautions him not to hope too much, that it might be futile. "I don't know yet."</p><p>"Did you know you weren't going to stay?" The last words break off into the quiet, almost as if the world didn't want to believe them to be true. A scan of his eyes beneath the tears, lips knocking open and Soonyoung wonders why he hid it from him this entire time.  "You knew?" drops heavier than the beats of his heart.</p><p>"I told my parents I wanted to stay," Seokmin whispers, almost begs to be the truth.</p><p>Soonyoung drops his hands from Seokmin's face, the whole world a blur. He looks around anywhere that isn't the tears down Seokmin's cheeks and he almost curses at the calendar on the wall, stuck in the month they met. He freezes up, wonders why Seokmin didn't tell him such a thing, especially before any of this started.</p><p>But when Seokmin steps close, closes his face in his hand, the tears do come.</p><p>And he's supposed to have dinner with Seokmin's parents.</p><p>"I'm sorry, Seokmin." The thought plummets to the pit of his stomach. He shakes his head under Seokmin's palms, lifts his hands up against his hands there, and tugs them off. "I don't think I can stay any longer."</p><p>Seokmin’s hands freeze across his cheeks, but after a moment of letting those words settle, he nods, understands. He follows him down the stairs and to the back of the bakery, shows him the way out. Heavy silence between them, Soonyoung doesn't ask him to walk him home, but Seokmin sticks by him, even in the sudden onslaught of a drizzle.</p><p>Before they part at the lobby of his apartment building, "Call me when you get home," loses the life from the past times they’ve told those words to each other.</p><p>Seokmin nods once, his eyes clinging somewhere below Soonyoung’s own, before he turns around and heads home.</p><p>In his room, he slips off his rain-battered clothes and slips into bed. And a couple hours later, he wakes up to his mother opening the door, telling him Seokmin called earlier, not long after he came home.</p><p>"Did you want to call him back?"</p><p>Soonyoung shakes his head, throws the blanket past his head.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The morning after, clouds follow Soonyoung on his last days of summer vacation. On his bed, he curls up even more when the thought of parting the curtains seems just too much for him right now. He turns over under his blanket, drags the edge past his eyes, and he tells himself not to look at <em>that</em> corner of his room.</p><p>His eyes sink shut every few minutes, at every second into the time he should be getting ready and making his way to the bakery. But today, his heart can’t rile up the desire, the need, or the energy for the bakery or anywhere outside at all.</p><p>Stepping outside to wash the sleep off his face and remnants of the night, he winces at the sound of Seokmin’s name tossed around the kitchen, wrapped in his parents’ voices and hurled straight at him. Where he is, why they didn’t see him in the bakery today. He shakes his head, doesn’t mean to slam the bathroom door shut behind him</p><p>He knows the field is the last place he should be going if he doesn’t want to think about Seokmin, but where else would he go right now? Why is it the only place that comes to mind?</p><p>The leftovers of rain seep into his shorts when he sits on the grass, but he doesn’t care. Dusk begins to settle into the sky, coaxes everything in him to look at everything above him. When he can no longer find the sun, he finds himself sinking his head in his arms, the ache in his heart only relieving if he cries.</p><p>Nothing was going to last too long, and he thinks that thought would have sent tears in his eyes, but it doesn’t. When something tickles at his palm, when he brings his hand up to his eyes, the tears drop all around the firefly dead at his palm.</p><p>Later that night, he doesn’t hide the pink roughs in his eyes and how his parents’ shoulders fall defeated when they call out to him for dinner. They tell Soonyoung he should go shower and “There’s grass all over your shorts, Soonyoung.”</p><p>All he can do is nod on his way to the bathroom. And in the shower, he stands there for a moment, can’t get rid of the image of the firefly at his palm and the light dying out because of his own doing.</p><p>When he pulls his blankets past the crown of his head, he stills under the knock at his door. His mother’s voice soothes him in an offer to listen if he wants, but he shakes his head. But like all the other times he refuses to talk, he’s grateful she understands that refusing to talk doesn’t mean refusing company every time.</p><p>He feels the edge of his bed dip at his hip, his mother’s palm patting his arm with no question about anything.</p><p>____</p><p>His first day back to work after that, he tries not to rip his coworkers’ heads off. He wonders why they keep asking about his bad mood and why they stopped seeing the smiling guy outside.</p><p>But he makes it through the day without a drop of blood. At home, he sheds his work clothes off and stays in his room, even when his mother calls him for dinner. He stays in his room, even when his father calls him for dinner.</p><p>His appetite runs away, but the tears stay with him.</p><p>He begs for an answer as to how Seokmin can just leave like that. <em>On bad terms</em>, he reminds himself, and a sound escapes at the thought that it might be a while before he can see Seokmin again, if ever, before he can apologize to Seokmin in person for how he reacted and how he distanced himself away that isn’t just the kilometers without meaning to.</p><p>A knock at his door, there’s no use in hiding the tears when his eyes burn just as bright as the painful heat at his cheeks. He looks up at the click of the door open, to his mother there. His eyes fall on the mug in her hand, steaming at porcelain rim. The spoon in the mug clinks as she steps inside, closes the door, and sets the mug on his desk.</p><p>He rubs at his eyes relentlessly, and he’s afraid of what his mother would do, what she would say to him.</p><p>But his mother sits wordless on the floor with him. Palms across his face, he sniffs hard at the gentle skin comforting his tears there. He wipes his nose with the back of his wrist, and his voice trembles when he says he’ll eat dinner later. He looks up to his mother nodding, running a thumb over his cheek. He can’t help but lean into the touch until he’s falling forward and his arms wind around his mother and his arms falling weak, and he doesn’t stop the cries out his lips and against her neck.</p><p>“Why did he have to go?” he whispers. She wraps her arms around his shoulders, rocks him a slight. “Why didn’t he tell me he wasn’t going to stay?” he sobs into his mother’s arm. “I miss him, Mom.”</p><p>____</p><p>When he wakes up, his heart races and his temples throb from last night. He curls himself up in bed and when someone knocks on his door, he closes his eyes and pretends to sleep. He keeps quiet that way until he’s the only one home.</p><p>____</p><p>His backpack for school stands at his bedroom door close to ready. He has less than six hours before his first class this semester and with the schedule finally printed and highlighted for the times and buildings, he makes sure that there’s at least a pen and a notebook in his bag. A snack or two never hurts, but his mother, before she goes to bed long before he does, urges him to cook himself a proper lunch. And with his schedule on full-display at the kitchen counter, his mother shakes his head at his time on university grounds going from eight in the morning to one in the afternoon, at the earliest, knowing Soonyoung will be more than hungry with just a snack or two.</p><p>But in the hallway, when he’s just about to call his mother that he will start heading to the bus stop soon, the doorbell stops him. He opens the door to the grandmother a couple floors away from his apartment with Taerin at her side and holding her hand. In her other, a white envelope.</p><p>“I got this letter in the mail, but I think the person wrote the wrong address.” </p><p>He looks down at the letter, at the address that houses Taerin and the grandmother but Soonyoung’s name above it. His eyes snap to Seokmin’s name at the corner, and he doesn’t know why he wants to crush the letter in his hand.</p><p>But he thanks Grandmother for bringing the letter over, thanks Taerin, too, with a pat on her head and a forgiving smile. And at the bus stop, his curiosity eats him up. He opens the envelope the moment he steals a seat in the back of the bus.</p><p>
  <em>Hi Soonyoung.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Taerin told me this was your address. I think. I’m not sure, actually. She kept saying this address when she asked me about you, and it sounded right.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I understand if you’re mad at me. You don’t have to explain it. I just hope you’re doing okay. If you don’t want me to send you another letter, I slipped in a stamp and an extra envelope and piece of paper in this letter so you can let me know. But until then, I’ll keep writing to you.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Seokmin</em>
</p><p>____</p><p>The first weekend since classes have started up for him again, Soonyoung carries the habit of hiding Seokmin’s letter inside his notebooks between the professor’s pauses. Between pauses of studying at home or in the university’s library, he opens the letter, reads it once before folding it back up and hiding it back in his notebook.</p><p>In the closing of his notebook, Grandmother comes by to his apartment today with a bag of green onions for his mother and another white envelope for himself. She supposes that the same person wrote the address wrong again. With an apology for the inconvenience, he thanks her for bringing the letter and the green onions.</p><p>He thinks he should reply to Seokmin to at least tell him he’s sending letters to the wrong address. He thinks that’s an acceptable purpose for the paper and envelope Seokmin sent over.</p><p>
  <em>Hi Soonyoung.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>School is starting. I remember that we started on the same day. Are you excited?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You don’t have to reply to these. I still hope you’re doing okay.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Seokmin</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Hi Seokmin</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I think Taerin told you her address instead of mine, and you’ve been sending letters to her. Her grandma dropped by both times to give me these letters.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I was mad at you at first. I wondered why you had to go. I wondered why you didn’t tell me you were only staying for the summer. But I couldn’t stay mad at you. You made my summer, and summer won’t ever be the same again.</em>
</p><p><em>This week was my first week of class and it went okay. I thought I would see you around, but I have to accept that I really won’t. Are </em>you<em> excited about starting school? I never got to ask you about your school and studies. There weren’t enough days of summer for us, so I guess this is the only way I’ll know?</em></p><p>
  <em>So what are you majoring in? Something to do with music, I hope? Are you taking hard classes? Is your sister also going to school with you, too?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Soonyoung</em>
</p><p>When he takes the mail key with him that afternoon, he makes sure to slip in an extra piece of paper with his actual address in it. With his parents catching him on his way down, their raised eyebrows send him clamping his mouth shut.</p><p>____</p><p>Since starting classes, Soonyoung can officially and truthfully declare that he has made new friends and has caught up with some familiar faces. Despite the new names in his life, expiration date of remembrance just at the end of this semester, there’s always a hollow feeling living in his chest when he compares them to Seokmin. The feeling of holding back and keeping his mouth shut crosses every conversation and study session. As much as he’s grateful that he has people he can eat lunch with or borrow notes from when he’s not up for going to classes, people that remind him to take his mind off of work and school, it’s just not the same.</p><p>The comparison, the idea that perhaps if Seokmin was here, he wouldn’t have to feel so tired every day, wears him down to a bare wire. Shoes at the front door, backpack in his bedroom, he doesn’t bother to even change out of his clothes when he considers crashing on the couch this afternoon.</p><p>And upon waking up, about to flip over and away from the sunlight, he freezes up at the crinkle under his chin. He opens his eyes to an envelope tucked under his crossed arms. He blinks, notices that it’s not a notice from the university, notices it’s Seokmin’s name.</p><p>
  <em>Hi Soonyoung.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’m sorry for sending these to the wrong address. And I’m sorry for bothering Taerin and her grandma...</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Summer really won’t be the same. I’m sorry for not explaining it earlier, and I’m sorry that it seems like “I’m sorry” is all I can say. I stayed there for the summer to just help with the bakery because it’s their busiest time of the year and I haven’t been home in so long. I was afraid to tell you because I didn’t want to leave. I was scared.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But now, summer really won’t be the same anymore.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’m kind of excited for school. I love sleeping in, though. I have music theory and a piano class and as much as I want to be excited for them, they’re so early in the morning. I have a couple other classes not related to my major, but I forgot what they’re called. All I remember are essays. My sister graduated already and she majored in business, so the bakery is all her’s. To be honest, I’m debating about business because of the bakery, like my sister.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I hope school isn’t going too bad for you.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Seokmin</em>
</p><p>____</p><p>He finds a sweatshirt in his laundry, having no recollection of ever buying it at all. But any other time than now, he would slip in and wrap himself in the warmth. Any other time than now, he would be happy with such a small piece of Seokmin around, with the closest thing he can have to Seokmin around.</p><p>He slips into the sweatshirt for a moment, hugging himself under the warmth, before pulling it off and folding it away from his parents’ view.</p><p>____</p><p>The first time his friends ask him to hang out on a weekend, his parents tell him not to stay out too late. Despite the snow trickling in bit by bit, he’s surprised that he and his friends manage to grab enough tickets to the new movie. It’s the movie one of his friends has been waiting for months to see in theaters, the offer of such a simple and relatable story.</p><p>Between his one friend tearing up and the other fighting for the popcorn, dread creeps up in his heart when he watches the two characters run down the train tracks. There’s dread in his lungs when they find out one has to move. There’s dread in his heart when they try to reconnect and meet up at the train station. The dread settles into home at his chest when they think they find each other at the train tracks years later, but she disappears before he can move.</p><p>Despite his friends spilling out the reasons for their tears, the chances that the two characters won’t find their ways back to each other after that, even as friends, Soonyoung’s chest hollows out that the movie is just reminding him of Seokmin. He knows that the movie is just fiction, but why does it have to be so close to his reality?</p><p>____</p><p>With his exams over, Soonyoung spends his first day of the winter break in the field. This place, despite the memories and no revivals of them that he yearns for, calms his heart. He lets dew mark his pants and the air ghost out his lips. And he wanders around, wanders to that same spot Seokmin discovered fireflies for the first time. He wanders to that same spot where Seokmin knocked down onto the grass and kissed him the first time.</p><p>There’s still an awful wring at his heart about the movie his friends watched together--the long distance, the reconnect and disconnect. He stuffs his hands in his pocket, kicks some snow up. He stands in the middle of the white grass, and his heart kicks in the memories overwhelming him from the inside, all the memories this field holds in summer.</p><p>The fireflies flying around his head, the kiss storming up his thoughts, and dragging Seokmin here everyday in the summer, the snow crunches an extra step behind him, but he doesn’t turn around. He starts walking forward, starts walking faster to get away from the steps, but the steps keep coming. He doesn’t lose his thoughts in getting farther away from the steps that he doesn’t realize he’s been pushing away what the person has been saying to him this whole time, pushing away the fact that someone else is in the field with him.</p><p>Soonyoung turns around and his heart drops.</p><p>Pink at the cheeks and breath ghosting all around chapped lips, his eyes fall on the envelope tucked into the coat pocket. The last letter Soonyoung sent flicks in the winter wind, Seokmin lets the deep sigh cloud in the meter between them.</p><p>It’s trepidation between them, and the tear falls from Soonyoung’s eyes. It’s just been so long since he has last seen Seokmin.</p><p>For a moment, they don’t dare to move, but Seokmin lifts the envelope and this time, the pink teases his cheeks like an afterglow. He bites his lower lip before explaining to him, “I got it in the mail a couple days ago, before I came here.”</p><p>Soonyoung nods solemnly. He should feel better now that Seokmin is here, after months of wishing he was here. Why doesn’t he feel that way?</p><p>Seokmin steps forward, but he doesn’t move back nor move closer. When Seokmin is just a step away from him, Soonyoung doesn’t lift his head up when he confesses, “I missed you.”</p><p>Seokmin admits those same words, barely decipherable, “I missed you, too, Soonyoung” before “Can I hold your hand?” Soonyoung tenses at the words, at what anyone else will see or make up. “They can’t see us here,” Seokmin whispers this time.</p><p>Soonyoung takes a step forward, wonders if Seokmin really is here or if he’s making all of this up in his head and his mind is doing a brilliant job at it. He reaches over, holds Seokmin’s hand. With Seokmin’s hand loose in his for a second, he threads their digits together, presses their palms together. He basks in Seokmin’s warmth, runs a thumb over the back of his thumb.</p><p>He hears a sniff in the quiet and looks up to Seokmin wiping the tear at his eye.</p><p>“What’s wrong?” Soonyoung asks him, lifts a hand to brush the tear off for him.</p><p>“I just missed you a lot,” he confesses, “and I’m so sorry for everything.”</p><p>He feels the tears in his own eyes when he says Seokmin shouldn’t be sorry. If he was truly mad at Seokmin, he wouldn’t hold hands like this. If he was truly mad at Seokmin, he wouldn’t have answered, “I really missed you, too.”</p><p>The next thing he knows, the air fills up with the scent of Seokmin’s jacket from the summer, the rainy day that left him soaked and in borrowed clothes. The space fills up with Seokmin, Seokmin, Seokmin when the younger hugs him tight. Seokmin’s hand runs up the back of his neck and cards through his hair.</p><p>He doesn’t stop the sob against Seokmin’s neck as they stand there and delve into his presence. But he pulls back because he can’t breathe with Seokmin’s winter jacket burying his vision and his entire face. He chuckles at the tear down his cheek, the absurdity of winter, as Seokmin lifts a hand up to his face.</p><p>When Seokmin drops his hand, after wiping the tear off, Soonyoung asks how he has been since the last letter.</p><p>Seokmin shrugs with a tiny smile, admits he arrived in the city a couple hours ago. “I’m sorry I couldn’t reply to your letter this time.”</p><p>“It’s okay.” And Soonyoung’s smile burns, tears blurring his vision until his vision disappears from smiling so hard. “Did you want to come over and tell me instead?”</p><p>Seokmin raises his eyebrows at his question before he drops it into a smile. He nods once, a tiny one, and his voice comes down like a lullaby when he answers, “Yeah, I’d like that.”</p><p>Their walk home is interrupted with a stop at the bakery. With tight hugs from both of Seokmin’s parents and even his sister, he waits outside at the bench, away from the winter bustle of warm coffee and bread in the shop at this time of the day. Seokmin comes back outside with him, a box of baked goods above the "I baked these at home, not in the bakery."</p><p>When he takes Seokmin home, his mother claps her hands over her parted lips, surprise all over and excitement surging all over the apartment at the sight of Seokmin. So much so that the first thing she tells him is to eat dinner with them later.</p><p>He lets Seokmin be cornered by his mother at the kitchen counter, asks all about him during his time away from home--if he’s going to school, if his parents are also with him, if his parents want to come over for dinner, too. Soonyoung giggles into the entire sight, Seokmin’s eyes darting everywhere, trying to latch onto every question, that when his mother says she will start making dinner, Soonyoung takes his hand and takes him to his room.</p><p>The moment they walk in, Seokmin scans around his room, eyes taking in everything that might have changed since the last time he stepped in. Hanging their jackets on the hooks, he denies Seokmin’s speculations that a lot changed in his room.</p><p>They pick everything up, as if they never separated in the first place. They sit down on the floor like old times, and they’re reminded by the abrupt gap in time and distance apart when Seokmin asks if it’s okay to kiss him.</p><p>And Soonyoung tries to hide his smile when he nods, fails to hide it at all when Seokmin slips a hand at the back of his neck and kisses him.</p><p>When they part, Soonyoung asks if he’s staying here for long. He frowns when the words of “Just for the winter break” intrude their days.</p><p>“I’ll be here for summer, though,” Seokmin tells him.</p><p>And Soonyoung smiles at that. “We can make summer ours again.”</p><p>"And spring, too," Seokmin pipes.</p><p>He kisses Seokmin once more. "And spring, too," he echoes quietly.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>thank you for reading just soft seoksoon being soft because i couldn't get my heart to write anything sadder :')</p><p>i'd say this is a simpler writing style from how i usually write, and i think it's probably much closer to outlines i write out</p><p>the movie referenced at the end is actually 5 centimeters per second, which came out in 2007</p></blockquote></div></div>
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